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Comment by Nathanba | Hacker News Reader

I just don't understand how they can think that not giving me a single free search per month is a good idea. I used Kagi when they still had a free plan and it was fine but I still preferred Google. Now I can't even try it again to see if it has additional value.

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As a business you don't want to serve everyone. That's why many companies after a while raise their prices, even if that prices out the enthusiast market they served at the beginning so they can go further up market.

Often times it does not make sense to serve free users who are often causing more hassle than it's worth. Having a free trial and then either converting users or not makes sense, but serving a user who uses it for a few queries every month ("I check every few months and only do a few searches at most") potentially does not exactly make sense business wise or even warrant the time building that free tier for an audience that's not willing to pay anyway.

Kagi now gives you 50 free searches, at least if you're not signed in.

Signed in? Do you mean, subscribed? I can't seem to use Kagi without loggin in.

Not promising it would work, but I would email support and ask to have the trial reset for your account. Companies are usually cool to restart trials if you ask.

I don't need a trial reset, I never used mine yet. I want to compare searches between Kagi and Google every few months to see if it got better. I used to recommend Kagi to people but when it's completely behind a paywall it's not easily recommendable anymore.

When you recommend a restaurant to a friend, do you expect that restaurant to offer your friend a free meal to see if they like it?

No, but it they make a monthly subscription to the restaurant, they should get a mean before hand.

Isn't that exactly what the free trial is for? Am I missing something?

Well, yes. You are right.

But as I read the OP it is that he objects to the barrier of entry. He would prefer (possibly very harsh) rate limiting over the hassle of registrering an account. Maybe combined with a weak "nag" screen.

It might be hard implementing in a bulletproof way as IP restrictions are easy to circumvent. But it might be "good enough" to drive more adoption.

I'm a bit on the fence. It would be an interesting experiment.

You can subscribe and let it sit. If you don’t use it for a month, they refund you that month. You can compare at your own pace.

If you want to hear from a happy Kagi user, I can say that I used Google thrice in the last two years, and it didn’t bring better results than Kagi.

You don't even need to verify your email, so just create a throwaway account, it's not that hard.

This approach ignores 99% of the value of Kagi. Google provides atrocious results compared to Kagi once you've taken a few minutes to use the basic Kagi features.

Do you think the potential upside is worth the $5 it would take to explore?

no, I check every few months and only do a few searches at most.

If you weren't convinced the first 100 times you tried a product, what is the reason to keep trying?

Sounds like you're just not the target audience, then. Not every product has to have an ads-based or freemium business model.

They offer a free trial with 100 searches

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