[freediver]

In general, assume that we pass down the savings to the user whenever we can.

Redirecting a bang costs us basically nothing, so it does not count as a search.

Also reloading the same search within a short time (~2 minutes, for example coming back in browser after clicking through a search result) does not count as an additional search as we served cached results.

Another tip: We have decent documentation (that is also open source and editable) and you can access it quickly from Kagi with the !help bang, for example

!help how are searches counted

will land you on

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/plan-types.html#how-searche...

[joshspankit]

> In general, assume that we pass down the savings to the user whenever we can.

This is great to hear but it doesn’t really address the point you’re replying to:

> Wish that was more clear

As someone who is just seriously noticing Kagi because of this HN post, I have no brand impression that tells me you’re trying to pass on the savings (most companies don’t) and the marketing material even makes me think you’re targeting a premium price point with healthy margins.

[freediver]

Interesting observation. What specific changes would you suggest us to make?

[joshspankit]

I’m also going to suggest a do not do: Do not make cost savings a public-facing core value. Racing to the bottom usually erodes the value prop while simultaneously opening the door for low-quality competitors.

I would suggest (and caveat: I’m not a marketer, just someone who has seen a lot of brands come and go) either of these directions:

1. Be clear about the cost savings when talking about the specific features. Example: Add a new heading to kagi/features/bangs.html that says “Bangs are Free” and talks about how bangs do not count towards your searches

2. Remove it from being part of your public values altogether. Lean in to the value prop of having a cost and let users self-discover what’s free. If it’s the right choice, highlight it privately: make it a line item on the monthly invoice with something that describes why they are free or put it in onboarding material.