Future Pricing Suggestion

Suggestion Box
1

Hello! :grin:

First of all, thank you so much for creating such an amazing tool. My girlfriend and I love coda.

As much as I love coda being free, here are 2 pricing structures that can keep coda accessible to everyone while still bringing in money:

  1. Donation Based

When people truly love something, as is happening with Coda and will continue to happen because itā€™s so cool, they will pay for it, not because they have to, but because they appreciate it and want to support it. An example of this model is the Free and Open source game engine, Godot

  1. Subscribe-to-Own

This is a model I havenā€™t seen anywhere yet. Itā€™s a hybrid of subscription and ownership.

Subscription based services are accessible because you can pay as you use them. Most people can find 10 extra dollars a month. And if they canā€™t, they can just cancel the subscription.

At the same time, there are people who may use a tool like this for a lifetime. After 10 years of paying $10/month they would have payed $1,200.

Merging these two models would allow for accessibility while also allowing users to truly own the tool one day.

For example, if you priced the tool at $240 to own, users could subscribe for $10/month. If they keep that subscription for a total of 2 year, they could then use the tool indefinitely

Users could also decide to pay the up-front cost in full, or in whatever size chunks they like

As a student I would personally be able to afford either of these models. This is an amazing tool and I would love for everyone to be able to access it

1 Like
2

I have a more pragmatic suggestion.

Add granular access control (on section / table / row / cell level) and charge for that on per-user-per-month basis as an ā€œEnterpriseā€ plan.

This way Coda will stay free for personal use and small teams (e.g. early stage startups) where people trust each other not to make malicious edits. And it will be paid for larger teams that need to enforce strict separation of access and, being established businesses, can afford paying.

As for the OP, donations donā€™t really work, and thereā€™s no other way for Coda to stay profitable other than with recurring pricing. Server costs wonā€™t go anywhere after those 2 years, so the ā€œbuy out after x yearsā€ idea doesnā€™t work here. Pay-once only works with on-premise software, not cloud-based SaaS. Paying users always subsidize non-paying users, so the only question is how to strike a balance there.

3

Super excited you love Coda! Iā€™m on the product team here at Coda and working through our pricing options. Appreciate all the ideas! I welcome any more thoughts. One question I have is what you use Coda for the most? What is the one feature you would absolutely hate if we didnā€™t have it?

-jaime

4

Turns out weā€™ve heard this one a bunch. Completely working through the right model for how we could enable something like this. If you have thoughts please let me know! -jaime

5

Yeah, re the feature request I noticed :slight_smile: I just meant that it could also be your monetization pillar.

Right model ā€” via formulas, I guess. If I were you Iā€™d take some inspiration from how Firebase Cloud Firestore security rules are organized.