Almost two years ago, shortly after launching blogs and accounts, we created our Casual subscription. At $10, this is the perfect plan for people who want a little more than what our free tier offers, but don't need much more. In fact, today it's just as popular as our Pro plan.
Since then, we've added SSL support to the custom domains you can add to your Casual blogs, and Read Write.as has grown to an audience of thousands per month, including readers across Twitter and the fediverse and those who visit Write.as just for the stories.
Because of this, and largely to get rid of the awkward “$0.83 per month” pricing, the price for new Casual subscriptions will go up to $12 per year starting August 1. Existing Casual users, including any who upgrade before August 1, will keep their $10/year rate for as long as their subscription is active.
After this, you likely won't see any changes to the Casual rate, except perhaps with a new multi-year payment option. If you'd be interested in this, let us know on the forum!
We love open source software at Write.as. We use it every day, from the operating systems our developers use, to the servers and bits of code our platform runs on. We open source many of our libraries and clients, and are moving towards open sourcing our entire web application.
Recently we saw an open source project, Liberapay, suddenly had their Medium publication taken down with only 12 hours notice — apparently the result of some automated process — and we stepped up to offer them a discount. They ultimately had other plans, but we thought we should make that offer official, and open to the entire web.
So we did. If you maintain an open source project and need a maintenance-free place to write about it, now you can get our Casual features for free (or 25% off of Pro)!
Our Casual plan lets you use your own domain name (with SSL included) and publish to an audience on Read Write.as — so your hosted blog can still be yours, and you'll have readers from day one. We also take a strong stand for free speech on Write.as, don't let algorithms remove content, and are funded by our founder and customers — so your words will be safe here.
We hope this will help more open source software maintainers effortlessly get their words on the web, so they can spend more time creating awesome software that powers the world. And if you're a student, non-profit, or educational institution, ask us about other discounts we offer!
The other week we talked about how important identity flexibility is to us. We explained how each Write.as blog is like a lightweight identity, independent and never linked to the others. And while Pro users get 10 of those blogs / identities now, we know that sometimes you just need a spare or two.
So today we're happy to announce a new “Casual” subscription plan, featuring some of our best new features. For $10 / year you can:
Publish up to 3 blogs
Make unlimited cross-posts to Twitter, Tumblr and Medium
Use a custom domain on your blogs
Export your entire account as JSON
We hope this plan will fit even the most occasional writer who still wants to directly support a product they love. And if it still doesn't fit you, let us know why so we can improve it. Enjoy!