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Comment by jaksmit | Hacker News Reader

I tweeted about this last week and was surprised no one else noticed sooner: https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2F_...

their roll out of this pivot has been a disaster:

1) Last week the homepage was saying it was free: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6v7ctgeakcya1wi/1.png?dl=0 but when you signed up it asked you to pay $100/hr or $3000 a month

2) Then yesterday they updated the homepage to say it was a paid ONLY service: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t01zei3j9k6e99f/2.png?dl=0

3) Now today they've updated the homepage wording to say it's free OR paid: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5qlrt6vfzsigda0/3.png?dl=0

Venturebeat did a post on the pivot: http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/04/magic-to-start-charging-10...

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Ahh, the people who can't read. It says magic+ is paid, magic is free.

Also, pretty sure a service like this doesn't give a shit what the website says. If you are reading the website, it's either not for you or you have an interest in tech news and the exact pricing structure doesn't matter to you anyway.

Pretty sure this service doesn't need to advertise.

Neither of them are free, magic+ is hourly with minimum commitments and magic is pay per request, with free consultation before you get a quote.

The screenshot says "free to chat," which Magic is.

Yeah, free to chat, not free if you want to actually use the service.

It's the same as getting a quote from any other professional service (lawyers, doctors, etc.) which is generally free.

Sure. Just saying, the screenshot isn't misleading in that respect.

Before we rolled out Magic+ today, we did quite a number of split tests regarding prices and messaging. We also have had a private beta of Magic+ going for some time. Venturebeat as well as a few others seem to have screenshotted our website when it was in various stages of being split-tested.

@cmikec it wasn't just split tests on the messaging. if you signed up last week you ONLY got texts telling you to sign up to a payment plan. If you sign up today then it offers you the paid version OR the free version

That's still split testing of the messaging... in that one message gives different information about their services than the other. Different information being leaving out the free option. Clearly they wanted to see if a higher % signed up to the paid option depending on whether the customer knew about the availability of a free option.

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