Why Kagi launched "no use, no pay" | Hacker News Reader

Why Kagi launched "no use, no pay"

getlago.substack.com

84 pointsAnhTho_FR31 comments

I'm always interested in new ways to handle billing/subscriptions/etc and this is a cool change.

I recently heard of a payment strategy that I liked a lot though I understand it's hard to explain to customers. John Siracusa's Hyperspace [0] app has the following options:

* Monthly, recurring

* Monthly, one-time

* Yearly, recurring

* Monthly, one-time

* Lifetime, one-time

More details in the developer's own words here [1]. The interesting options are the Monthly and Yearly one-time options. For anyone in the Apple ecosystem you can technically get this behavior by purchasing a subscription and immediately cancelling it (since you will get the full time period you paid for still). But I really like this payment style especially for an app like this where I don't want to pay-per-use (that feel punitive) but I don't really have ongoing data-deduplication needs (at least the features the product currently offers). It's a "once every year or so" and I might need to run it multiple times on different directories/different settings.

"Time-based unlocks" might be a better way to think about it. There are lots of products I would 1000000% pay for 1 month of, if it auto-cancelled, but I don't need it every month. Often I just skip using the product completely since I have no idea if I cancel if they will close my account right away and/or try to refund me. I just don't want to have to set a calendar item to remember to cancel a day before it renews.

I'm not opposed to subscriptions, developers need to make money and platforms/OS change all the time (especially in mobile) so there is ongoing maintenance. But the issue for me are apps I only need for a little bit or infrequently. If Adobe offered a "1 month, no renewal" then there is a good chance I'd still be using Photoshop instead of switching to Pixelmator Pro.

[0] https://hypercritical.co/hyperspace/

[1] https://hypercritical.co/hyperspace/#purchase

It sounds like a good option to have with confusing phrasing. "Buy access for 1 month" would be a lot more clear than "monthly" which to me indicates something recurring (I'm not a native speaker).

It also sounds like an option that reduces sales in almost all cases, so it will never be widely adopted.

For completeness, it does say “one month, one year or forever” in the linked FAQ and makes clear it’s not recurring. GP rephrased the FAQ.

As much as I like lifetime purchases I think for software products it creates too many liabilities for all parties. Probably in the fine print you need a carve out saying it won't actually be provided in perpetuity (what software is?). As a purchaser I don't think it's realistic to really expect the software forever. I think of it more as a supporter/founder tier with various privileges that will one day end - and it should probably be advertised as such.

Sounds like you're assuming all software is SaaS that requires the provider to keep it available?

Software used to all be lifetime purchases by providing you with the actual program. If you bought a copy of WordPerfect in the 90s it will still work fine today even though no one is offering it anymore.

Then don’t sell a lifetime license

I don’t disagree with you. I’ve had several “lifetime licenses”, some of which were quite costly, become varying states of useless. Some were acceptable (no more updates because the vendor was acquired/folded but the software still works and can be activated) and some were hostile (no more updates because we ran out of money and decided “lifetime” isn’t actually “lifetime” or “we folded and shut down activation servers that are required to install the app without patching out drm”)

But the solution is very simple then. Just don’t promise what you can’t deliver? Why mislead customers with fine print double speak when you could just be upfront and say “license for until we run short on cash” or whatever

My Sublime Text licenses are perpetual.

I have various perpetual CAD licenses going back to the 90's.

Same for some development tools, some, or maybe just one dating back to the 80's. (MAC/65)

MSDOS

All versions of Windows I have used and or purchased.

Microsoft Office

Libre Office

SGI IRIX

And I could go on for a long time. Point is a whole lot of software runs on some sort of perpetual license. Any why not? It all does what it was written to do.

Until very recently, with the rise of software in our browsers, one could expect most software to operate this way.

When new versions are needed, AND if needed, payment for that work is obvious and entirely reasonable. And with some software navigating what happens if new is needed becomes huge pressure to get people to upgrade. And that is sometimes unpleasant.

CAD is one of those for sure.

Subscription software, in many cases --and I am speaking generally here, can be easy to subscribe to.

All good right?

Well, I tend to keep software that2, Supports my skills.

Doing that would be huge payments!

As a buyer,I expect to see software coat / licensing make better sense.

I would like more per use options, like Adobe pro, canvas I just need them a couple times a month or web tools that I use once and that's it

I’ve been paying for Kagi for about 18 months and it’s pretty much the only subscription I have that it’s never crossed my mind to cancel it.

The first time I remember seeing a “no use, no pay” plan was with the ProVUE’s Panorama X excellent database application for macOS.

https://provue.com/

oh this is interesting because I feel like it wouldn't work with infra as that runs in the background and you almost never have zero usage on a DB.

IaaS is mostly like this already. There are some things where it’s not used like VMs which serverless tries to solve. Additionally people tend to waste tons of resources with IaaS because they don’t scale on usage.

Yeah that's exactly what I thought: Infra is usually more usage based

Note: Kagi uses and pays Yandex, some of your data and money will go to Russia

Currently on the “no pay” part due to this. I had become very dependent on Assistant and Orion.

What makes kagi users more of a community than other search engine users? I imagine it's a somewhat self-selecting group so I can't tell if it's just verbiage or a meaningful distinction.

They all pay, it's a distinction to "every other search engine" and their users.

They have a Discord server where news and updates are released, hyped and discussed.

Kagi is appreciated and people like to associate with appreciated things

They sent me a yellow tshirt. If I ever run into someone with the same tshirt, we can high-five and say “same team!”

There’s thousands of us!

My daughter loves when I wear the shirt. "Doggo!"

I never got my T-shirt. Might have gone to my old address (they said they would send it to the new one though!)

You and me both. Sad I never got mine.

I think it's similar to those note taking apps that were big a few years ago (Roam Research, Obsidian etc.)

Being weird enough to not use the free incumbent and pay for a niche solution instead means you share values with those people, which unites them and creates a community

Maybe Kagi treating them like one?

The feel is smaller, closer compared to Google, as an easy example.

I'm really curious about this because it actually incurs some interesting possible customer service issues. Say someone signs up, then usage lapses for a while. Then they use it. Bam they're charged. Will they remember that they signed up? Some of these edge cases are defined in the article but remain unanswered. It sounds like the team at Kagi didn't even think about them, which is interesting. Still I'd like to know the answer.

Hey, Brandon here from Kagi's marketing team. Happy to answer this! It's certainly something we thought about, but have yet to have any issues from customers "forgetting" that they were signed up to Kagi since launching our fair pricing policy. Some users could forget, and "accidentally" use it but I believe that will be incredibly rare. If the customer is confused by this, we are more than happy to assist with reimbursement or to cancel their account etc. We're very open with this and want to take care of our customers as best as we can.

Is there anything that prevents Kagi from doing an OpenAI and going for profit?

Kagi is already for profit, they just haven’t raised a huge amount of money:

> Kagi can afford this because they go further than being bootstrapped and profitable: As a Public Benefit Corporation, not beholden to maximizing shareholder value.

What is the actual difference?

As far as I can see it explicitly allows management to consider public benefit, which is something they can do anyway (certainly if the shareholders allow it).

They are for profit, they're just a "public benefit corporation". I don't know exactly what that means and I don't think it comes with any obligations (like being a non-profit would).

It's the same status Patagonia has. I think it's more of a signal to investors (we won't maximize your gains) and a brand boost with the community.

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