The legacy $9/month "enhanced start" plan (Nov 2013) allowed 5000 uploads/month and 150,000 conversions/month.<p>According to Filepicker today they are "upgrading" such plans to their $49.95/mo startup plan, which allows 2000 uploads and 6,--- conversions, but they are increasing the uploads to 5,000.<p>So it looks like 5x more $ for 96% fewer monthly conversions.<p>The email does not say when it takes effect.<p>text of their email:
I wanted to let you know about an update to filepicker's service. To sustain our level of service and future upgrades, all legacy enchanced start plans will be upgraded to our standard starter plan at $49/month.<p>In addition we've rewarded our existing users with more than double the starter file allotment to 5000 pics/month. We want to ensure you don't incur overages in the future. Please confirm with me when you're available and thank you very much for using filepicker!
I did get a note back in response to my inquiry that they do not intend to reduce the conversions so dramatically, and indicated if I needed 150K (which I don't) they would allow that. Personally, the usual 3x or 4x more conversions than uploads seems fair.
I am interested in "big data" sorts of things and I have to admit SaaS pricing schemes have me scratching my head all the time.<p>There is certain things where the cost of provisioning the service is high enough where the pricing really has to be cost-driven to some extent but on the other hand, the general principle is that your pricing should be value driven.<p>I think for instance of the dime-a-dozen machine learning services out there that have a "free tier" which won't let you run a large enough training set to get non-embarassing results, for instance.
Time to look at the alternatives?<p><a href="https://uploadcare.com" rel="nofollow">https://uploadcare.com</a><p><a href="https://developers.kloudless.com/" rel="nofollow">https://developers.kloudless.com/</a><p><a href="http://filespin.io/" rel="nofollow">http://filespin.io/</a>