Important Clarifications and Apology Regarding Kagis' Pricing Update | Hacker News Reader

Important Clarifications and Apology Regarding Kagis' Pricing Update

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3 pointsgilrain10 comments

Also got it. Good they see that the communication lacked a litte. As a previously paying customer it's nice to see that they see they made a mistake.

I understand it's a startup but everything is happening on a really short notice.

7 day notice for pricing update, few hours notice for a live on discord.

In the end I decided it's not worth it for me to count my searches. I don't want to think about it, think about plans. To me it's a clear indication that sticking to Bing API, that does such price hikes is not worth it but I don't see them having a good way forward without Bing.

I am one of these 200 mentioned, and this email did not convince me to resubscribe. Some major changes to the pricing plan would. Or honoring better grandfathering. If it's 200 people maybe you should reach out to the one by one.

I replied to his original emails and he was smug, condescending, and unapologetic. He probably won’t have much luck reaching out to these people one by one. The whole thing is built on a competitor’s API. The business is not going to work, unfortunately. I liked the product though.

I like Kagi a lot. They add a lot of value on top of the Bing API. The results are cleaned up and for certain topics I find a lot more relevant links than I do on DDG, Google or Bing.

But I do see a huge problem - as you said - as their business model only works out if people search _less_. That’s a difficult proposition and hard to navigate.

I received two emails from them today, and I found them useful.

I like that they made it clear that with the previous pricing, they lose money. With the new pricing, they still lose money with the early adopters.

Overall I see that as an experiment: can one create a paid search engine, or are we doomed to keep the ads/tracking businesses? I pay to say "I believe there is a market".

I understand that some may not afford it, that's ok. I don't understand those who leave Kagi just because they adapt their pricing. A bit like "I want a paid search engine, and I can afford Kagi, but instead I will go support a free engine because the former is not yet profitable".

I would be surprised if the 200 accounts they lost were losing them money on average. Many of the complaints seemed to be from customers who simply want peace of mind, rather than to calculate their average usage and determine subscription value. I think it’s likely that customers who were subsidizing heavy users disproportionately left.

Of my two accounts, one used about 20 queries per day and the other used single digits. It’s not the price required to cover my usage which matters, it’s the price required to have peace of mind, which increased 150%.

Right, maybe that's that. But I still kind of struggle to understand the "piece of mind" argument.

I don't buy the most expensive version of everything I buy just to have piece of mind. I buy what I believe makes sense, and update my beliefs when I see results.

In this case I will try Kagi and see if that works for me or not.

This said, I don't like the variable automatic payment idea. I hope there will be a way to fix an upper limit, and to just prepay to add money on the account.

I received this early this morning. No corresponding blog post.

I’m surprised they ask me to sign back up and pay another month in order to get the Early Adopter flag. All the paid months that I was an actual early adopter don’t count? Nah, I’m done.

> All the paid months that I was an actual early adopter don’t count? Nah, I’m done.

Oh yeah, that is a little insulting.

I think requiring a future paid invoice technically makes it a “late adopter” flag.

I received a second update and if I understand correctly they changed that. Early adopters will stay early adopters.

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