Hacker News Reader

Comment by colinclerk | Hacker News Reader

Hey all - looks like there's a lot of confusion on the pricing model here. That's our fault, sorry!

The free plan does not include 2-step verification, and that was the reason for the increase in the paid plan.

We'd love some feedback on how you'd like to see the free plan constructed. What would be most helpful for getting you started with Clerk?

View on HN

For me to take a company seriously MFA must be in all their plans. MFA is not an enterprise hook for upsell, it is a fundamental requirement for any online service these days.

Agreed, MFA is so important that a company should be willing to pay for it.

I'm not saying companies won't. But if you want me to believe your security is top notch then you need to show me you take it seriously.

Not offering MFA on the free tier tells me you're more interested in making money than in security.

There are plenty of other features that an enterprise will pay for.

Auth0, Microsoft also have MFA as a non-free thing. Probably because they have to pay for an SMS/equivalent.

It would be good to offer SMS MFA in the free tier, providing the dev plugs in valid Twilio credentials.

I and GP comment seem to take the opposite stance: MFA is so important that products like this shouldn't offer a plan that doesn't include it. Either include it in your free plan or don't offer a free plan; don't make security an upsell.

> ...don't make security an upsell.

Especially in a security focused product.

If you are going to offer MFA, it needs to be standard. How would you feel if seatbelts in cars or life jackets on boats were a paid feature? What if your bank charged extra for declining suspicious transactions?

Not the type of behavior you'd expect to see from the company you're handing all your user account data over to.

> What if your bank charged extra for declining suspicious transactions?

They do. There is a pool of money they make that they take from gains made on your money before you get the remainder as interest. That is what pays for that.

You shouldn't make your users choose between MAU supported and features.

Here's how I would do the price tiers, since you asked:

* STARTER - Free up to 5,000 MAU, features as listed.

* STARTER PLUS - Add a credit card and just pay $29 plus $0.05 for each additional MAU over the first 5,000. Same features as listed for STARTER.

In this approach, MAU 0 - 5,000 is free, and MAU 5,001 is $29.05. In the Starter plus tier, 6000 MAU is $29 + $50 = $79 and 10,000 MAU is $29 + $250 = $279

* For the PRO tier, the jump is pretty dramatic between $29 and $249 for the same # of users, so I suggest a 2x rather than a 8x premium. This means that you should price pro at $49 plus $0.02 for all users. This makes 5001 users $49 + $100 = $149

In this arrangement you don't even need to have a 5000 starter cliff for Pro. You can start with pro at even 500 users if you wanted the MFA features and the cost would be just $49 + $10 = $59.

Just my 2 cents.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com