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Why Kagi launched "no use, no pay"
- leejoramo 2y agoThe first time I remember seeing a “no use, no pay” plan was with the ProVUE’s Panorama X excellent database application for macOS. https://provue.com/ https://provue.com/
- FinnLobsien 2y agooh this is interesting because I feel like it wouldn't work with infra as that runs in the background and you almost never have zero usage on a DB.
- godman_8 2y agoIaaS is mostly like this already. There are some things where it’s not used like VMs which serverless tries to solve. Additionally people tend to waste tons of resources with IaaS because they don’t scale on usage.
- FinnLobsien 2y agoYeah that's exactly what I thought: Infra is usually more usage based
- rmholt 2y agoIs there anything that prevents Kagi from doing an OpenAI and going for profit?
- pbronez 2y agoKagi is already for profit, they just haven’t raised a huge amount of money: > Kagi can afford this because they go further than being bootstrapped and profitable: As a Public Benefit Corporation, not beholden to maximizing shareholder value.
- graemep 2y agoWhat is the actual difference? As far as I can see it explicitly allows management to consider public benefit, which is something they can do anyway (certainly if the shareholders allow it).
- FinnLobsien 2y agoThey are for profit, they're just a "public benefit corporation". I don't know exactly what that means and I don't think it comes with any obligations (like being a non-profit would). It's the same status Patagonia has. I think it's more of a signal to investors (we won't maximize your gains) and a brand boost with the community.
- joshstrange 2y agoI'm always interested in new ways to handle billing/subscriptions/etc and this is a cool change. I recently heard of a payment strategy that I liked a lot though I understand it's hard to explain to customers. John Siracusa's Hyperspace [0] app has the following options: * Monthly, recurring * Monthly, one-time * Yearly, recurring * Monthly, one-time * Lifetime, one-time More details in the developer's own words here [1]. The interesting options are the Monthly and Yearly one-time options. For anyone in the Apple ecosystem you can technically get this behavior by purchasing a subscription and immediately cancelling it (since you will get the full time period you paid for still). But I really like this payment style especially for an app like this where I don't want to pay-per-use (that feel punitive) but I don't really have ongoing data-deduplication needs (at least the features the product currently offers). It's a "once every year or so" and I might need to run it multiple times on different directories/different settings. "Time-based unlocks" might be a better way to think about it. There are lots of products I would 1000000% pay for 1 month of, if it auto-cancelled, but I don't need it every month. Often I just skip using the product completely since I have no idea if I cancel if they will close my account right away and/or try to refund me. I just don't want to have to set a calendar item to remember to cancel a day before it renews. I'm not opposed to subscriptions, developers need to make money and platforms/OS change all the time (especially in mobile) so there is ongoing maintenance. But the issue for me are apps I only need for a little bit or infrequently. If Adobe offered a "1 month, no renewal" then there is a good chance I'd still be using Photoshop instead of switching to Pixelmator Pro. [0] https://hypercritical.co/hyperspace/ https://hypercritical.co/hyperspace/ [1] https://hypercritical.co/hyperspace/#purchase https://hypercritical.co/hyperspace/#purchase
- poincaredisk 2y agoIt sounds like a good option to have with confusing phrasing. "Buy access for 1 month" would be a lot more clear than "monthly" which to me indicates something recurring (I'm not a native speaker). It also sounds like an option that reduces sales in almost all cases, so it will never be widely adopted.
- peanball 2y ago
- Rebelgecko 2y agoWhat makes kagi users more of a community than other search engine users? I imagine it's a somewhat self-selecting group so I can't tell if it's just verbiage or a meaningful distinction.
- lillecarl 2y agoThey all pay, it's a distinction to "every other search engine" and their users. They have a Discord server where news and updates are released, hyped and discussed. Kagi is appreciated and people like to associate with appreciated things
- derwiki 2y agoThey sent me a yellow tshirt. If I ever run into someone with the same tshirt, we can high-five and say “same team!”
- throwup238 2y agoThere’s thousands of us!
- Cerium 2y agoMy daughter loves when I wear the shirt. "Doggo!"
- graemep 2y agoI never got my T-shirt. Might have gone to my old address (they said they would send it to the new one though!)
- CobaltFire 2y agoYou and me both. Sad I never got mine.
- FinnLobsien 2y agoI think it's similar to those note taking apps that were big a few years ago (Roam Research, Obsidian etc.) Being weird enough to not use the free incumbent and pay for a niche solution instead means you share values with those people, which unites them and creates a community
- superultra 2y agoI'm really curious about this because it actually incurs some interesting possible customer service issues. Say someone signs up, then usage lapses for a while. Then they use it. Bam they're charged. Will they remember that they signed up? Some of these edge cases are defined in the article but remain unanswered. It sounds like the team at Kagi didn't even think about them, which is interesting. Still I'd like to know the answer.
- shakna 2y agoLogin tokens expire long before - so it'll require an explicit login, before you present as a returned customer.
- brandonsalt 2y agoHey, Brandon here from Kagi's marketing team. Happy to answer this! It's certainly something we thought about, but have yet to have any issues from customers "forgetting" that they were signed up to Kagi since launching our fair pricing policy. Some users could forget, and "accidentally" use it but I believe that will be incredibly rare. If the customer is confused by this, we are more than happy to assist with reimbursement or to cancel their account etc. We're very open with this and want to take care of our customers as best as we can.
- siquick 2y agoI’ve been paying for Kagi for about 18 months and it’s pretty much the only subscription I have that it’s never crossed my mind to cancel it.
- 7373737373 2y agoNote: Kagi uses and pays Yandex, some of your data and money will go to Russia
- Shadowmist 2y agoCurrently on the “no pay” part due to this. I had become very dependent on Assistant and Orion.