[happyfeet]

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).

When you price a subscription product, one should factor in long term sustainability at that price, for a long time.

Any price increase due to additional features / facilities you provide - say 24*7 on-call support, must not be burdened on your existing users.

Provide a way for existing users to "opt" for those at a higher price, but leave them at the current price as they stand.

[bigiain]

"It is surprising to see this coming from Spreedly"

Really? A relative newcomer to e online payments space, undercutting the status quo pricing of the incumbents, suddenly finding they've underestimated the costs of running their service? Doesn't surprise me at all...

If I were building a new business based on any of the new online payment services, especially if they're significantly less expensive than traditional merchant accounts or PayPal, I'd be treating it as a short term windfall until they discover the hidden costs they're not charging you for. If they're _very_ lucky, maybe they've got some brand new fraud prevention technology that means the genuinely have lower running costs than PayPal or Visa, but I wouldn't bet _my_ business on it.

[ntalbott]

This makes me chuckle - the funny thing is that we were actually the first "small business" subscription service - Chargify, Recurly, etc., all launched well after us. That said, it also meant we didn't have any point of reference when we initially set pricing. I think we actually did surprisingly well four (4!) years ago, given the lack of information we were working with.

[karamazov]

This is a great point - their choice may very well have been between raising prices and shutting down.