I’m finding the pricing plans both:
A: Pretty overpriced
B: Too confusing
Right now I primarily use Coda for personal use, I also setup a doc for my previous (small) company which became popular among staff. So I’m thinking about it from a few points of view, primarily individual and non-business team use.
To keep this easy to digest, I’m just summing my feedback up in bullet points:
- Too many factors being changed from tier to tier
- There’s a lot of jargon words, even for a long time Coda user (Doc maker, editor, workspace member)
- This is the big one for me: the line between an individual and team is really unclear. For example you can have a team consisting of ‘pro’ users, or a team consisting of ‘team’ users? Who is paying for what here? If I have a a pro account, and a friend has a pro account, how does that work? Do I then have to pay an extra $10 if I invite them to my workspace even if we’re both paying? Can a ‘team’ have a mix of pro and team tier users?
- Github and cross-doc packs being limited to team users only seems arbitrary to me? If I want those just for myself, I need to pay $30 a month for a ‘team’ user even though I’m on my own?
How I’d suggest it to be
If it were me, I’d be inclined to ditch the free tier altogether in favour of a generous free trial period. Then make the standard tier cheaper (around $4 a month) and tailored to individuals. As an individual, they are not restricted in terms of packs that aren’t purely business related (jira and intercom come to mind) and shouldn’t run into limits in terms of doc sizes/automations within reason.
They can also still create a workspace and invite people to join their doc/workspace, but that invited user will also have to pay for an individual account themselves after their free trial (in addition, you could potentially keep the read-only access and stuff available for non-paying users). This way, individuals can create their own teams where necessary, but they are made up of individuals paying for their own accounts.
Then the teams tier should be focused for businesses where one person (ie, the business owner/delegated staff member) is responsible for paying for their users. I get what you’re trying to do by bundling editors with a doc-maker but I think it’s just more confusing. I think the team owner should be able to add the exact number of doc-makers and editors they need and each user type has a price tier ($2 for a editor, $6 for a maker or whatever).
This feels much clearer for both businesses and individuals wanting to build a team together to me. It’s closer to how services like Google Drive works: fewer factors to consider between tiers, a clear individuals tier and business tier.
On a side note, appreciate the $30 discount for being an early adopter but it feels more of a ploy to get us to upgrade quickly seeing as it expires Dec 1st and, based on the current pricing it doesn’t go very far!