First of all, congrats on the 2.0! A huge milestone!
Secondly, my two cents on the pricing. I am too a bit disheartened, although I knew it was coming.
Here’s what I’d consider fair:
- Not introduce the 50 objects, 1000 rows limit. Or at least do that for new users but not existing ones. The golden rule of not p-ssing everyone off is: if something’s already free, don’t make it paid. Awarding credits isn’t really the same thing.
- Keep the GMail pack in the free tier, but disallow white-labeled emails (i.e., force “Sent from Coda” in free-tier emails).
- Makers and editors are basically the same thing. If I understand it correctly, the only difference is that a maker can create docs, but anyone interacting with the doc is still an editor (i.e. a paid user). Instead, I’d split the roles like this: doc builders (create, edit docs), doc users (interact with controls and buttons that builders have set up for them, maybe can input data into cells, but certainly cannot edit table structure), and viewers (read-only). Charge more than now for builders, less than now for users. Now that would indeed be a different pricing model.
This is not about the value now. The value is unquestionable. It’s about not becoming a bait-and-switch product. Remember how everyone used to love Medium and how everyone’s fleeing it now.