Spreedly doubles pricing.

Last year here on HN, Nathaniel said this:<p>"The ridiculously huge mistake I think Chargify made here was something I thought was just a given these days: they should've unilaterally grandfathered all of their existing clients, and quietly given the grandfathered plan to anyone who was already integrating but not yet launched as well." (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781104" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781104</a>)<p>It's one thing to trash your competitor publically. It's another to then do the exact same thing you were complaining about one year later.<p>This isn't about the numbers - $30 is jack squat. This is about principles. With this decision, Spreedly shows that they can say one thing and then do the exact opposite. And that's troubling.

My monthly Spreedly bill went up by approximately the amount I spent on AdWords between 9 AM and 3 PM on Friday.<p>I know pricing discussions generate a lot of heat, but honestly, $30 is not a lot of money. Nor does it magically become a lot of money after you have 500 customers, at which point you have very high-class problems.<p>Here, let me extend that graph with one extra line:<p><a href="http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/spreedly-price-change.png" rel="nofollow">http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/spreedly-...</a><p>This subject seems tailor-made to solicit opinions from pathological customers who are not likely to be either good customers for Spreedly or successful at selling many accounts, totally regardless of whether Spreedly costs $5, $50, or $500 a month.

I think those suggesting that this is an insignificant rise are missing the point.<p>These subscription billing services have close to the most powerful lock-in imaginable on your business. When you commit to one, you are trusting them with a vital part of your operations. At best, switching later is going to be disruptive to your business and potentially damaging to your customer relations.<p>This is the third of the most well-known recurring billing services to sharply increase prices in the not-so-distant past, after Recurly and then Chargify. In each case, that suggests they have either screwed up their projections so much that they had to grab extra money or deliberately screwed their customers over by dramatically increasing costs when they have an all-but-captive audience.<p>Either way, that is a serious black mark against an organisation that's asking you to trust them with something as important as your payment processing, particularly when those organisations are already relatively tiny compared to most payment-related services and therefore inherently risky to build on anyway.<p>BTW, blog posts from these services about how they are just trying to find a sustainable business model and hope their customers will understand aren't exactly reassuring. If they could get things so badly wrong before, why should we trust that they are doing any better now and won't see another rise next year?<p>This isn't newsworthy because of the amounts involved. It's newsworthy because it reflects on the competence of these payment services and illustrates a dangerous trend.

I'm very surprised they haven't chosen to "grandfather" existing customers, so that they can remain on the previous pricing model.

If it is so sticky, why don't people sign up for multiyear contracts for recurring billing services with some sort of price guarantee?

It is surprising to see this coming from Spreedly, especially in the context of their previous discussion on the same topic in HN (when Chargify increased price).<p>When you price a subscription product, one should factor in long term sustainability at that price, for a long time.<p>Any price increase due to additional features / facilities you provide - say 24*7 on-call support, must not be burdened on your existing users.<p>Provide a way for existing users to "opt" for those at a higher price, but leave them at the current price as they stand.

Sure, users can export and migrate, but that costs time and money to do. Code must be updated to work with the new provider and other projects would be put on hold.

I know the Spreedly guys personally (and have been using them for years). Honestly, they underpriced their services and need to make more money if they are going to add features and build a better product.<p>Doubling their prices certainly seems like a reasonable idea, I wonder what other models they looked at.

It's not so much the rise in monthly fixed costs that's the problem.<p>It's the doubling of per transaction pricing (that will just sting month after month) and the lack of features compared to now cheaper competition. Recurly at 10c vs. Spreedly at 40c.

&#60;plug&#62; Run your own Spreedly and stop adding service fees to your payment processing fees! <a href="http://www.opengateway.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.opengateway.net/</a> &#60;/plug&#62;