In the open

pro

We plan on making a change to Casual and Pro accounts sometime in the next few days: reducing the number of blogs / identities included with your subscription, while giving you the chance to add more for a small fee. There are a few things driving this decision:

First, the generous number of blogs per account is a relic of the early days of our business model. Back in mid-2016, we didn't have all the Pro features we have today, or the large audience on Read Write.as, so we offered more blogs to make the plans worth their price. Today, however, writers enjoy a full-featured platform at (what many people say is) a reasonable price, so this isn't as necessary.

Besides that, many people request discounts on our subscriptions because they don't actually need all the blogs we offer. We used to give those discounts, but again as we've added features and become more useful to more people, that's come to make less sense.

Lastly, we've been considering increasing the price of our Casual subscription (out of necessity), but also looking for ways to avoid it. After all, its cost is meant to be accessible to as many people as possible, so more people can have access to our permanent, privacy-respecting home for their writing. We'd like to keep it that way, and this is how we'll do it:

Soon we'll be launching our marketplace, named Extend Write.as. Along with the recently-launched Write.as Labs, we'll be offering new add-ons through this channel that help people customize the platform to fit their exact needs.

One of the first things that'll launch on the marketplace is the ability to purchase an additional blog. It'll be available for everyone — even if you're not a Casual or Pro subscriber — and will cost $12 per year, per blog. With this change, Casual accounts will come with 1 blog (instead of 3), and Pro accounts will come with 3 blogs (instead of 10).

As always, existing subscribers will keep their current blog allowance for as long as they hold a subscription. So if you'd like to get the current allowance at a great price, now is a great time to upgrade! Otherwise, you'll be able to add as many blogs to your account as you want sometime within the next few days — and again, help us ensure we're around for decades to come.

Have any feedback? Let us know what you think on the forum.

#pro #casual #changes #writeas

This month we revisited our pricing model and realized how much money we lose to processing fees each month on our $4 Pro plan. We found that 10.5% goes to our payment processor, Stripe, as opposed to only 3.5% when customers pay annually — a big difference in our revenue.

When we originally launched our annual Pro plan we wanted to keep the pricing straightforward, so we just multiplied the monthly price by 12 and called it a day. People didn't seem to mind, but still our monthly plan remains the most popular.

So beginning on Monday, March 5, we'll start passing on the savings we get when you subscribe to an annual Pro plan by permanently dropping the price to $40 per year. We hope it'll encourage more people to go yearly, helping us all save a bit of money.

For anyone currently on the $48 / year plan, you'll be able to switch to the $40 / year pricing when you want (we'll show a reminder in the app), and you'll see the savings the next time your subscription renews.

As always, let us know what you think of the new pricing!

#pricing #pro #changes