Another long, but definitely needed one. Here we go:
I’m having a real hard time understanding what does not following a fix schedule have anything to do with the ability to announce an upcoming change in pricing.
Is it because you think price changes notices needs to follow a fix schedule, and because you guys lump it together with new releases that doesn’t have a fix schedule it’s therefore impossible to let your community know beforehand?
Or by “fix schedule” you mean there isn’t a set date? Because this would be even worse; what this would tell us is that not only is communication with your members very poor, but communication internally within the company is almost nonexistent that even the employees within the company don’t know when the update is set to release nor what the major changes are that’s included in the imminent update.
I wanna believe that this is not the case, which leaves us to two possibilities that I can think of:
- You guys did plan to announce it (whether beforehand as a heads up to show appreciation to your beta users, or just skip that thoughtfulness and announce it during the new version release post) but for some reason there was no checks along the way to make sure of it; and now for reputation control you won’t admit it. Or more likely…
- You guys deliberately chose not to announce the price changes to your beta users because you’re cognizant that it is a very drastic hike in price from all perspective (even though may be necessary to meet your venture-backed pricing pressure) and it’s not something you’re fond of talking about publicly; which, if you think about it, actually makes more sense to do the opposite and have your beta users know about the price increase beforehand because then those people that were eyeing on a plan would jump on board at that time before the drastic price hike, those that wouldn’t bite even after getting the notice wouldn’t have mattered anyways, and Anytype would’ve came across as transparent and considerate in this moment in time to your beta users which helps your brand loyalty long term. This would’ve been more of a PR win for you guys than just keeping quiet.
If it’s not any of these and it’s something else, please let us know.
What a long stretch to say you that guys have been open about this and that we shouldn’t be surprised. Do you actually think what @anton said above 3 months ago convinced anyone on the fence to purchase a plan then, solely from his post because he was so open about it? I highly doubt that because what he said is so vague. If you mean restrictive as in the pricing will increase, then duh, price increase is to be expected for price changes as time goes on or when an app gets out of beta; but no one would’ve though being more restrictive means prices are going to be more than doubled. What is different in this context is that Anytype is still in beta (or whatever terminology you want to call it not being production-grade), there are still lots of features that many are waiting for that hasn’t arrived, bugs are still appearing left and right, the apps doesn’t have feature parity on different devices, etc., and definitely makes sense that users would hold out longer if they could for the app to be more stable before financially committing, but some of them would jump on board to lock in the pricing if they knew it’s going to change like this. If Anytype was stable, in > V1.0+, and production-grade then no one would be calling this out, but the reality is Anytype isn’t, and the people that are in this community are the people that put aside their time to make reports to improve the beta app.
We don’t know roughly when the new pricing will arrive. The roadmap is hardly reliable half the time nor kept updated as its been idle for a couple of months in summer.
@sharipova brought up regional pricing in last year’s town hall https://vimeo.com/1038892310/c71c4229c6 (at 28:15) and said that discussions were happening about it in the company to make plans more affordable especially for users in other parts of the world.
Here’s the transcript to save some of you a click: “I saw there was a lot of comments on prices, that our memberships are too expensive for some of the regions like Asian regions. We are currently in discussions of how we can make any kind of plans that are more affordable. This point is raised. We also think that there could be a way for another tier or another combination, and entry price should be lowered to as much as possible, like $1-2 per month, we are trying to target some plan like that.”
I know you and I have talked about this privately via email last year, but community that attended the town hall or watched that part of the recording at their own time won’t know if this is going to be a part of the new pricing or not, and would make sense for users in countries with of lower currency exchange rate to wait for this; however doing so would’ve meant they lost out on the affordable pricing for plans with more than 10 GB. This could’ve easily be cleared up with my suggestion in this topic, of letting your beta users know in advance of upcoming price changes especially before v1.0.
Also, restrictive can mean different things here. We don’t know whether it’s the number of shared space, we don’t know whether it’s the username, we don’t know whether it’s the ability to publish pages, or the ability to chat in different conditions, etc. Someone who only cares about sharing more than 3 spaces with more than 10 people may think they need to jump on the plan to lock in that feature 3 months ago because it’s going to be “more restrictive”, when it’s actually the opposite and they got more shared spaces; if they jumped on a plan to lock in the shared spaces feature after seeing Anton’s post things will be more restrictive, they would’ve wasted their money because what they were trying to lock in was actually expanding. You can switch the spaces example out for a lot of other features, including those that didn’t change.
No one knew the drastic-ness of the change, no one knew when (we’re half way through 1.0, roadmap isn’t as reliable), no one knew what (which part/feature is being restricted), no one knew how (price increased 2x or more); so no, I wouldn’t say you guys were “open” at all just because of the what Anton said above. Try asking your community if you guys were “open” about the recent price change if you truly believe you were, I wanna see how many people knew about it.
It’s as if you guys deliberately chose not to tell us reveal any upcoming price changes to your community, and if so, then hold the Anytype’s value of transparency up high just say it like it is, “we don’t plan to announce the price changes because of xyz” (unless you guy’s think “xyz” wouldn’t have made sense).
Is this indicative of how all communication (or lack there of) between Anytype and it’s users will be long term?
Seems like the answer to my question above is leaning more towards a yes.
What’s worse is there is no write up of any sort about the new pricing, not a blog, not a social media post, not a newsletter, not even in the release notes, this is how transparent you guys are, including to your beta users that’s been with you for years giving feedbacks, reporting bugs, telling others about Anytype and growing your user base.
Your community members will only find out about the price changes by surprise if and when they visit the website or the membership page of their account, which most don’t for no reason. So actually yes, this change to storage would come as a surprise.
Here’s a case study for how Proton Pass increase the price for their beta users. Pass was released in April 2023, price was $1 per month. When they plan to increase the price, all they did was give a heads up to their early supporters by making a simple post before the actual change. It really is that easy. Proton respect their early users enough, especially those that aren’t a paying customer and are using the app for free in the early days (because that who the post was solely for, people that were already in the community supporting the early version of the app) to let them know that the price was going to increase. Price for Proton Pass still went up even more in 2024 and 2025 but there were no more announcements, they did it in 2023 because those were the early supporters that want to actually purchase a plan but are on the fence since the product was still unpolished with bugs missing features, but would appreciate the heads up and jump on a plan before the price increase; just like all your community members in Anytype right now.
Maybe unfair and I shouldn’t be comparing Anytype to other companies that are favored by their community, if this is too high of a standard for Anytype then please tell us so we know what to expect.
This is one of the easiest and lowest hanging fruit to build trust in you guy’s community of beta users. Way easier than getting reviews, way easier than going open source, way easier than writing good website copy, way easier than getting an audit, way easier than writing blogs or making videos; the fact that even this did not happen is such a bad look especially to your current beta members that helped Anytype improve the app and spread the word. What’s worse is the action of letting your users know is not something that is unknown to you, this topic existed months ago and was bumped multiple times with other members agreeing; at this point it’s very unlikely that this was an oversight to everyone watching.
I should emphasize that this is not directed at you Filip, but more so the people that makes decisions (and I got a feeling you tried to bring this up internally after my previous post above). And I should especially emphasize again that the focus of this is less so about the current pricing, storage, etc but more so on the inability for the company to communicate. Anton’s post above does not do the job even the slightest and should not even be considered as the justification.
I really didn’t expect such a fumble from Anytype.