We keep raising the price of Beemium (currently $64/month as I write this). When we do, we grandfather existing users for a year. Most businesses warn everyone when they raise prices. It’s a classic Act Now inducement: lock in the old price before it’s too late. We don’t do that for the Beemium price hikes. Why not? Because we don’t want more people getting Beemium. Do we hate money, you ask? Not exactly. We actually have a list of reasons we want to wean people off Beemium and discourage new users from opting for it. Setting a high price is saying “don’t go for this one unless you really, really want it”.
So here are the reasons.
1. It’s unbeeminder-y
I, as an avid Beeminder user (as opposed to ex officio as CEO), personally dislike Beemium and have never paid for it as a user. Bee (my cofounder and CTO) is the same. We do both pay for Bee Plus, and would pay much, much more for it. The zero-dollar pledge caps feel especially wrong. A Beeminder graph with nothing at stake is hardly a Beeminder graph. And the 50% charity option: see our old post on why we hate anti-charities, which includes a bit about why we don’t think commitment devices with (good) charities as the beneficiary are ideal either.
2. We might kill it eventually
See our old Strategy Memo: Beeminder Is Pledge-Focused. Though more likely Beemium is the principled exception, the thing we would keep charging for even if we made everything else free. Beemium is where the revenue-eating features go. Which brings us to…
3. It’s expensive for us
In particular, Beemium includes quasi-real-time support and the charity option which is partially shirk-n-turked so we’re a bit averse to creating more Beemium users especially if they don’t care much about those expensive features.
4. Pledge short-circuiting is a honey trap
Not that we intended it to be. It just, in our pretty vast experience, is something people think they want but tend to be wrong about. When someone jumps to a huge dollar amount at stake because they’re feeling all gung ho and hard-core, they’re more likely to weasel when they derail. Or freak out and quit when it gets hard. Climbing the pledge schedule like God intended is, empirically, more awesomeness-inducing. But this is admittedly highly individual; if you’re sure that you want pledge short-circuiting, you could be right.
In conclusion
Mostly we could call this a boring business decision. Beemium is expensive for us and expensive for you. Also the cool kids don’t need Beemium. Bee Plus is the coolest plan, in our humble opinion. And look how cheap it looks, next to Beemium! 🤑
Thanks to Alys for encouraging us to blog about this.