Thanks everyone for your genuinely thoughtful feedback on Coda 2.0 and our pricing structure. Today, during our team sync, someone commented that while some of the comments may be hard to hear, most of them come from a place of real appreciation for Coda and really are constructive. I wanted to say how much I appreciate that sentiment and to let you know we are definitely listening.
My hope for Coda has always been that it’d be universalーan all-in-one doc that’s accessible to anyone and applicable for almost any thing. We’ll always have a large base of makers who use us for free, and knowing how important it is for a product like ours to be easy to try and share, I felt comfortable focusing on building the product first and launching paid plans later. This approach does have a downside - for some people it implies a transition, and transitions are often hard.
We designed our pricing model such that much of our user base could stay freeーmaking sure everyone has access to the essential building blocks and common interactions. On the team side, we saw an opportunity to innovate a little. Most of our competitors charge evenly for doc makers, editors, and viewers. With Maker Billing, we decided to charge for the people who use Coda most. The idea is that by aligning with maker incentives, we encourage more collaboration and spread.
We’ve received a lot of positive responses from teams, but it’s clear from this thread that there are some scenarios for which this model doesn’t work as well.
I’ve asked the team to spend time learning more about each of these cases and make sure we are interpreting the circumstances and feedback properly. I would love if you could speak with us and help us continue to make Coda better for everyone. Email us at help@coda.io and we’ll be in touch to schedule a call.
Please keep the feedback coming, and know that we are listening to every word.
Never be afraid to make a quality product and ask to be compensated for it. The internet is not charity. I for one don’t want to pay with my attention, either. Keep up the good work (and please consider detaching yourselves from Google-only login).
I agree 100% with what Jonathan said - I NEVER want to be the product (as most “free” products and services make users the product); so I’ve got no issue with paying for said product/service.
However, a more appreciative acknowledgement of those early beta testers and contributors/makers (particularly those who contributed via phone calls and focus groups, etc) would have been more prudent in my mind. A $15 credit, while better than nothing, isn’t overly generous…
Again, I agree 100% - email signups and possible additional storage options (Dropbox, Tresorit, ie. more secure storage) would be VERY appreciated.
I agree wholeheartedly with @Jonathan_Heuer. I love your team pricing model - it’s very fair. I also use coda personally, and feel the free model is fair too.
It costs money to stay in business and build something great. I love what you’re doing - keep up the great work!
First I want to say that I LOVE CODA. I tell everyone about it. I get the necessity for compensation, at the end of the day it is a business.
My goal is to eventually have our team use this, but for now that isn’t in the cards for my boss, as for the most part, I am the only one creating docs using it. So, for that reason right now, we will use the free side.
Don’t mean to fork off into another discussion but this page seems to only show positive feedback about the new pricing model.
I suggest to readers that you visit this other thread as well and see how other users including myself feel about the new pricing.
I’m glad I’m a recent user. Had I created hundreds/thousand of documents during the time Coda was smaller and more generous I would be very pissed right now.
I’m glad I’ve stuck to Google docs for more than 15 years. Yes perhaps not an apples to apples comparison but it all boils down to productivity tools.
I really appreciate the transparency. I knew from the very first time I tried Coda a few years ago that there’s no way it would be free forever. It’s just too powerful. I hope I can get it to be easy enough for my team to understand and learn so that it’ll justify another tool we have to pay for. I’m all for it, but will have to have some hard convos with my team to get them onboard.
My thought is that it does still seem very much like it’s early in development with constant changes. My team may feel better paying for something that has been established longer, but that’s just me guessing at the push back I’ll get.
Regardless - thanks for taking the time to not only listen, but to communicate back. It goes a REALLY long way.
I agree with the others that the prices and features per plan seem fair to me. My employer uses Coda, although I am mostly using it for my own personal project at the moment. It hasn’t grown yet to the point where I need to upgrade, although I think that when it does the price for that and what I would get for it are fair.
At the end of the day Coda is a business, we all knew that you would eventually charge but I feel the pricing structure need to change.
Also like Lyndsey said, Coda is still very much in a testing phase, although coda is more than capable of dealing with everyday tasks it’s missing a lot for me to be a paid member but doesn’t offer me enough as a free user. I am at the stage where if a competitor brings out something similar, then I as well as a lot of users would look at.
“My hope for Coda has always been that it’d be universal”
Yes! Coda should be a public good
I know it’s impossible, you need money, this is a business etc. . But that’s a bit how I always felt about it.
I’m using it a bit for my nursery: the free plan work, but thinking of the legacy after I’ll be away, the doc would grow and then not be free anymore.
There are a lot of use cases where Coda should be free and a lot of others where the pricing plan work.
Except, than there’s a limit of editors…
That’s what isn’t working yet IMO. I’ll call you later next week.
I start to feel like instead of combining all feedback (and a lot has been said already), Codans try to spread it to a number of discussions. I can barely follow what’s actually the opinion of the community with already 5 or 6 threads.
Hello,
I can not consider having a conversation with you because I am French and I do not speak fluently in English. But I want to tell you that I really appreciate Coda and the whole community of Coda.
I have a very small artistic photography company where I am alone. For now the free package is enough for me. I only regret that the Gmail pack is not included in this package.
Thank you again for all your work and good luck for the future.
I make photographs of collisions of drops of water or milk. If you want to see my work: [http://aimssi.free.fr/hvitesse.html](http://aimssi.free.fr/hvitesse.html)
Sincerely
Marie Claude Guérout
[http://aimssi.free.fr](http://aimssi.free.fr/)
Le ven. 1 nov. 2019 à 19:19, Shishir Mehrotra via The Coda Community coda1@discoursemail.com a écrit :
This is profoundly true as far as I’m concerned . And I’m profoundly grateful for having the ability to use Coda and all the work Codans do behind the curtains, making Coda, each time, a little bit better !
The more I learn about Coda, the more I want to use it . The more I use it, the more it gives me ideas to make my life better .
So thank you to you and all the Codans Team Members for creating/improving Coda !
Introducing price to a free product will cause friction and narrow the user base so after dealing with the fact that we all rather prefer a free product, we should move on and give suggestions or support other ones. By the way the message by Shishir look to me as a sincere effort to listen to users . I am myself a startup founder and as painful as it is , a price is needed not just for obvious reasons but to focus the product use cases.
So let´s deal with the situation to make coda achieve its potential as a game changer.
My focus is business and I truly believe Coda biggest disruption opportunity initially is in the small and mid business (& the Independent professionals) where a degree of customization is needed but there is not budget for custom SW deployments. For that segment the price shequeme -low overall cost of ownership is important but even more a channel to introduce and customize coda for their need .
IMHO I see 2 key elements ( among many others) to maximize the spread of docs and the user base
1- How to share a document ( large and complex -so above free tier)
a) To improve it ; you need a (easy/scalable) way to have docs where a people can all work on improve the same version. The option of each copying a version does not bring much to the original creator.
It could be just sharing a few docs with a few people ( with o without Pro )
if a PRO share/collaborate with another PRO just don´t charge twice ¡ ( I understand user pays for each workspace they belong to , so If each Pro share each a paying doc , the bill will be double ¡ so … just don’t charge to share/collaborate in doc among users in a paid plan
b) To test / light use/ Interact ; When one builds and share a doc( again above the free tier) with people NEW to Coda , it is a HUGE entry barrier to ask them (or you) to pay 5/6$ - for users that will just hit a button , add/modify their data or just testing the water . I understand this is a touch one for Coda as most business users will be light ones and want to charge them , but for Growth you need people to get hook to the product before charging and view only does not hook .
so my 2 cents of ideas ;
make them ( interactive users) free at this point to maximize reach ( re-visit it in a few months)
make each document ( not matter size) free for at least 14 days for each user
make bundles to get extra interactive users at a nominal price ( like cents…less than 1$ ) so people can have 50 users at a reasonable price for SaaS
The other key element to get "viral " growth is your community. Coda is an open canvas to craft any business need into an app … so the makers are the key and you have to incentivize them , make the win with you . I heard you are planning a referral program but the pricing structure has a essential influence in the success of a channel program - makers have to be able to earn a decent income if you want them to fully commit to design coda solutions for all the business out there . Business will required custom efforts not just a template. That means that even if is ok to share something with the creator of a template each time someone copy it, the real impact in revenue comes when an business 1st adopt a coda solution and 2nd - their users start seeing the benefits of a regular use . Those 2 moments will require you Sales prospecting and Customer Success headcount - and that cost will be a fraction if you on-board a legion of business & tech savvy freelance agents , just by having a well design incentivised agent/reseller program.
So facilitate the initial design & testing of interactive users( previous points) AND get a revenue share scheme that make worthy going after complex deals
I am sure there are many considerations but a community that shows a keen interest in investing their personal time to fight for your product is a precious force that steered the right way can flood the word …
regards and BTW congrats for a great product
I haven’t read through the other (more negative?) thread yet, but I thought the pricing model was fair. For my team of a dozen or so, it’s cheaper than some other tools we use on a similarly regular basis.
While it’s always great to save money and get things for free, when something like coda finds a home in my business, I actually prefer for it to be a paid service. It gives me confidence that they have a revenue model, and will therefore be less likely to go belly-up taking my business process/data down with them.
I’m sure there are use cases the pricing sucks for, but I think the structure is smart and reflective of user behaviour and the value different users get. Keep up the great work, Coda team!
I’m using coda to create a nutritional software that takes and elaborate data from some huge nutritional database, this is to create an advanced diet calculator.
The main purpose is to “sell” the saas at the cheapest price possible to the general public, so what i see as limitations in the current pricing plan are:
The possibility to not let users interact with the Doc without having to pay for everyone of them and so creating a lot of Editor (also because, from what i’ve understood, if they became editor they could possibly “mess up” with the doc, and i do not want them to copy and sharing it, like @Jorge_Araluce pointed out in his b) point).
This is my main concern because if nobody can use it the app is useless
Because of the dimension of the foods nutritional databases i need to connect more Docs to import just the needed data into the one’s that user is using, so i need the 30$ plan, but in that first phase while i’m building the app (that could take some months, as a “Solo” Maker) that’s a little bit pricey
I’d also like to know if someone have some cool ideas to monetize a coda doc to public users that you do not really trust (in terms that they not vandalize the doc), or some configurations to reach that goal
In any case Coda helped me creating a software that in no other way i could build, in first place for me and then for other users, and for that i will pay a small fee
!
. And I’m profoundly grateful for having the ability to use Coda 
and all the work Codans do behind the curtains, making Coda, each time, a little bit better 
.
