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I am on Kagi Beta but IMO they do not have a valid monetisation strategy that I would pay for. Their current pricing model is planned to be $30 a month for an '

by Closi 5y ago

I am on Kagi Beta but IMO they do not have a valid monetisation strategy that I would pay for. Their current pricing model is planned to be $30 a month for an 'all you can eat' subscription, or $10 a month for a 'lite' membership that gives you 20 searches per day and then charges you $0.02 per search after that on a pay-as-you-go model (but if you check your search history, you may be suprised how many searches you actually do!). Users who join the $10 lite plan for instance and then do 70 searches a day (I hit much more than this during a full day of programming!) would get hit with an overage bill of $25 at the end of the month, as well as the next months 'lite' charges of $10. On the 70 searches point too, if you search for "business news" and then click the news360 tab to get news results, I believe this is actually counted as 2 searches so would get charged at 4 cents if in the overages category. When I searched up I thought maybe $5 a month, or possibly $10 at a push, but $30+ will be too much for mass market adoption in my opinion. I also think there is an inevitable situation that someone searches a lot and suddenly finds themselves getting a $100 bill after they signed up for $10 a month! Unfortunately there isn't a way around the price too from an architecture perspective because it's a high cost engine to run - the costs are driven by the fact that Kagi uses the paid Google and Bing api's, then adds a bit of it's own index and instant answers, but the Google and Bing API's both charge quite a lot per request (c$0.015 per request). Search quality is usually pretty good (until it isn't), and it's getting better as it's manually tweaked to meet common queries, but the maps search is pretty much unusable. The search doesn't seem to "understand" queries in the same way Google does, particularly ones that are semantically hard (despite the results coming from google, Kagi reshuffles them). The founder, Vlad, seems pretty great though and is very active in the discord community. I really wish them luck, and particularly that they manage to crack the cost/pricing challenge they have. However I have gone back to Google with adblock as my daily driver as I just didn't get the same quality of results, and found myself going back to Google enough times to make it frustrating. I appreciate it is a beta though, and that it will only get better over time.

freediver 5y ago
Just a few notes. Search costs money and it seems we needed to get to 2022 to realize that. We made a choice of user = customer so yes the cost is real, and it is suddenly on the user. What they get in return is (at least a promise of) a superior search experience with a product that has many features that Google and similar ad-supported search engines simply never can. Our $10 plan is likely going to give the user 1,000 searches. 80% of users search less than that monthly, even average HN users (who are majority of our beta users). We will also have pay as you go option ($1 per 80 searches) and $30/mo for people who want to support Kagi. I would argue that our monetization strategy is valid as it is the only one that at least has a chance of making the business sustainable. Whether enough people would pay (which is what I think you were getting at) is another matter. Yes our Maps is completely broken now. But at least we are building our own Maps (together with our own Search and a Browser, not an easy feat). The vision is ambitious, I'd love a world where at least a portion of it is realized.
- mbwgh 5y ago
  > Our $10 plan is likely going to give the user 1,000 searches. Do you intend to make the search limit a daily thing, or will it only apply over the whole month? For me at least, I have spikes in my search behavior, like when I'm working on some difficult project, while on other days there's not much going on. While having a search budget would maybe get some getting used to, I could see myself working with it if I had a way to plan ahead. It would help if there was UI support for this, similar to what mobile phones have in the "Mobile Data" settings (data used/remaining, usage graphs and so on). I'm also on the beta right now, but haven't seen anything like that when looking just now.
  - freediver 5y ago
    > Do you intend to make the search limit a daily thing, or will it only apply over the whole month? Monthly for sure, even passing unused one to next month. We are building a UI for consumption data right now :)
- Closi 5y ago
  > 80% of users search less than that monthly, even average HN users (who are majority of our beta users). I suspect 80% of your users also are not daily-driving though, are also using other search engines at the same time, and have not set Kagi as a default on all their computers and their mobile devices (which I did!). In order to do that I had to change my mobile browser from Safari to Firefox, which is part of the reason I suspect most people have not done this. 1000 sounds like a lot more than 33 a day - particularly when if it is a search with a lens applied that drops to c16 per day, or a search that then clicks through to images. I also think that the people that are willing to pay for search are likely to be the 'power users' which use search more. If your target market is 'people who are willing to pay for search, but don't use search that much' I suspect you will be limiting the market that find the subscription valuable. > I would argue that our monetization strategy is valid as it is the only one that at least has a chance of making the business sustainable. Whether enough people would pay (which is what I think you were getting at) is another matter. I think the problem is a monetization strategy is only valid if people are willing to pay for it. Anyone can create a monetization strategy that is designed to cover costs, but it's not going to lead to a sustainable business unless it generates more value for customers than the fee provides.
wakeupcall 5y ago
I've been using kagi for a while. I was using google+ublacklist, and (mostly) searx prior to that. I only care about search, every other feature (maps, listicles, etc) is worthless to me. So far I've been quite pleasantly surprised. I didn't need to de-prioritize anything yet, and most of my queries are technical. I would pay for it, but like you say, I'm not sure how much. 5$ for unlimited searches is something I'd go for without even thinking. For 10$, I already question whether is it actually better than using searx where I get comparable results. I can get a VPS cheaper than than and run my own customizable searx instance for that cost. I'm not doing anything fancy, but I don't want to think about the query count. You can stack-up hundreds of searches per day sometimes, just because you're looking up something interesting, then do next to nothing for days. I'm not saying I wouldn't pay for more, but I don't see the gain. I definitely see the problem with the API cost of the underlying calls though. That feels like a huge argument that having your own index is important to compete in the market.
- telesilla 5y ago
  I'm also trialing kagi and have been very happy. $30 might seem steep but I'm happy to be supporting future enterprise for competition in the field.
- freediver 5y ago
  > I definitely see the problem with the API cost of the underlying calls though. That feels like a huge argument that having your own index is important to compete in the market. A Google size index that is potentially able to replace google results would probably cost $100m-$1B to build. We have a fraction of that built for noncommercial results (try Noncommercial lens in Kagi to see how it works).
  - wakeupcall 5y ago
    Aside from the upfront cost, how much do you think a query would cost? I know it's a bit hand-wavy as it depends on the infrastructure itself, but maybe you already have an order of magnitude of the projected cost? I wonder just how much margin google/bing is actually making with the API. I guess kagi is currently running at a loss?

by Closi 5y ago

freediver 5y ago

Just a few notes. Search costs money and it seems we needed to get to 2022 to realize that. We made a choice of user = customer so yes the cost is real, and it is suddenly on the user. What they get in return is (at least a promise of) a superior search experience with a product that has many features that Google and similar ad-supported search engines simply never can. Our $10 plan is likely going to give the user 1,000 searches. 80% of users search less than that monthly, even average HN users (who are majority of our beta users). We will also have pay as you go option ($1 per 80 searches) and $30/mo for people who want to support Kagi. I would argue that our monetization strategy is valid as it is the only one that at least has a chance of making the business sustainable. Whether enough people would pay (which is what I think you were getting at) is another matter. Yes our Maps is completely broken now. But at least we are building our own Maps (together with our own Search and a Browser, not an easy feat). The vision is ambitious, I'd love a world where at least a portion of it is realized.

mbwgh 5y ago
> Our $10 plan is likely going to give the user 1,000 searches. Do you intend to make the search limit a daily thing, or will it only apply over the whole month? For me at least, I have spikes in my search behavior, like when I'm working on some difficult project, while on other days there's not much going on. While having a search budget would maybe get some getting used to, I could see myself working with it if I had a way to plan ahead. It would help if there was UI support for this, similar to what mobile phones have in the "Mobile Data" settings (data used/remaining, usage graphs and so on). I'm also on the beta right now, but haven't seen anything like that when looking just now.
- freediver 5y ago
  > Do you intend to make the search limit a daily thing, or will it only apply over the whole month? Monthly for sure, even passing unused one to next month. We are building a UI for consumption data right now :)
Closi 5y ago
> 80% of users search less than that monthly, even average HN users (who are majority of our beta users). I suspect 80% of your users also are not daily-driving though, are also using other search engines at the same time, and have not set Kagi as a default on all their computers and their mobile devices (which I did!). In order to do that I had to change my mobile browser from Safari to Firefox, which is part of the reason I suspect most people have not done this. 1000 sounds like a lot more than 33 a day - particularly when if it is a search with a lens applied that drops to c16 per day, or a search that then clicks through to images. I also think that the people that are willing to pay for search are likely to be the 'power users' which use search more. If your target market is 'people who are willing to pay for search, but don't use search that much' I suspect you will be limiting the market that find the subscription valuable. > I would argue that our monetization strategy is valid as it is the only one that at least has a chance of making the business sustainable. Whether enough people would pay (which is what I think you were getting at) is another matter. I think the problem is a monetization strategy is only valid if people are willing to pay for it. Anyone can create a monetization strategy that is designed to cover costs, but it's not going to lead to a sustainable business unless it generates more value for customers than the fee provides.

wakeupcall 5y ago

I've been using kagi for a while. I was using google+ublacklist, and (mostly) searx prior to that. I only care about search, every other feature (maps, listicles, etc) is worthless to me. So far I've been quite pleasantly surprised. I didn't need to de-prioritize anything yet, and most of my queries are technical. I would pay for it, but like you say, I'm not sure how much. 5$ for unlimited searches is something I'd go for without even thinking. For 10$, I already question whether is it actually better than using searx where I get comparable results. I can get a VPS cheaper than than and run my own customizable searx instance for that cost. I'm not doing anything fancy, but I don't want to think about the query count. You can stack-up hundreds of searches per day sometimes, just because you're looking up something interesting, then do next to nothing for days. I'm not saying I wouldn't pay for more, but I don't see the gain. I definitely see the problem with the API cost of the underlying calls though. That feels like a huge argument that having your own index is important to compete in the market.

telesilla 5y ago
I'm also trialing kagi and have been very happy. $30 might seem steep but I'm happy to be supporting future enterprise for competition in the field.
freediver 5y ago
> I definitely see the problem with the API cost of the underlying calls though. That feels like a huge argument that having your own index is important to compete in the market. A Google size index that is potentially able to replace google results would probably cost $100m-$1B to build. We have a fraction of that built for noncommercial results (try Noncommercial lens in Kagi to see how it works).
- wakeupcall 5y ago
  Aside from the upfront cost, how much do you think a query would cost? I know it's a bit hand-wavy as it depends on the infrastructure itself, but maybe you already have an order of magnitude of the projected cost? I wonder just how much margin google/bing is actually making with the API. I guess kagi is currently running at a loss?