Regarding the pricing, it seems reasonable once you are going for Series A, but when you are still counting every penny, it is a bit steep (especially without a money back guarantee).
Having said that, yes there's going to be some oldschool investors or leads who will ask you for a PDF. But most leads won't give you friction if you mention that they need to log in to receive access to your secured investor area - it's not hard to understand that your company material cannot be out in the public; and the tracking part is not ever mentioned from experience.
Our primary goal with this product is to give the presentation owner a full background picture on their leads. There is no email + password sign up possible to evade that process as a conscious choice - no escape routes. If it's a big friction for an investor - by all means send him the PDF.
About frictionless sharing : A) We believe the business owner would like to know who sees his presentation, which areas they are interested in, and when they see it ( and PDFs don't provide any of that ) B) We are planning to add 'invite links' in the future, so leads can simply share to other leads by typing in their email address. If the feature really makes sense as opposed to keeping it simple - not 100% sure yet; but we'll keep on evaluating the idea.
It is something we will consider we will consider using.
A monthly subscription is just another thing I need to manage. Also, I feel like I am paying for a time where I may not be using it yet (there's a time delay between setting it up and actually going out to investors).
And the jump from $89 to $199 just for a CNAME is a little high as well.
Not everybody needs a secured presentation, and if you can create a page manually, that doesn't need access control, a CRM connector, slide behaviour tracking, activity notifications and/or lead background information - and if it looks great on mobile and other devices - then by all means!
The problem we solve is not the hardest problem in the world. It simply takes a lot of time to get around it, to maintain it and to implement all the 'nice to haves' into it. As we like to say in the XO office - "it's simple, not easy"
If you can do it yourself, without hiring another person for much more money than the existing solutions out there cost; and if it doesn't keep you from your main focus - then that's the way to go.