[patio11]

My monthly Spreedly bill went up by approximately the amount I spent on AdWords between 9 AM and 3 PM on Friday.

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.

Here, let me extend that graph with one extra line:

http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/spreedly-...

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.

[happyfeet]

You are right. This is true for businesses with substantial number of customers.

It is a significant difference for those starting up with small customer base (10 or 20) to pay from $23 earlier to $53.

[mikeryan]

I realize that there's many HN Members who may be trying to start a company in 3rd world countries where $30 is a significant chunk of change, and this may sound harsh. But if your business, at any point, can't absorb a $30 a month increase in fees for something as important as your subscription billing system then something is wrong.

[ohashi]

I am not really sure it's the price change that is most offensive. It's the fact they were willing to do it without regard for their current customers. I don't want to deal with a company that is happy to change their price whenever they feel like it and I get the short end of the stick.

[ntalbott]

Trust me, we weren't happy about having to raise the price. It was a painful, hard-fought decision to change it internally, and to not permanently grandfather existing customers. But in the end it's about having a sustainable business - the worst possible outcome for customers is for the service they were powering their billing with to disappear altogether.

[Strom]

Sure it can absorb a $30/month increase in fees. But if multiple service providers hit me with a $30/month increase then it kind of adds up. In other words, a price increase like this is ok as long as it's the only one.

[timharding]

Again, it's not the fixed cost. It's your per transaction pricing that has doubled so over the lifetime of your business and as you grow you'll pay 40c instead of 20c every month for every customer.

[patio11]

$2.40 per customer per year? If you can even see this difference, raise prices.

[ntalbott]

Once you hit sufficient transactions/month your per transaction fee will drop back to 20¢/transaction.

[mark_l_watson]

Yes, what you just said.

I don't use Spreedly, but it is a similar case with the AppEngine pricing: I want providers to charge a fair price and keep providing services. Also, same as AWS: I have customers who grumble some on their monthly bills, but providers need to charge a fair market price.

[vaksel]

small businesses are notorious penny pinchers, even $20/mo is a big decision for them. So doubling prices is a big problem for a lot of them...even if the actual cost is nothing compared to their other expenses.