Yeah, good thought. Would love ideas here for what people think could be fair. One idea we’ve considered is having some kind of “contributor” or “user” role where folks can only take certain actions, and those folks could be priced differently. But not super straightforward how to do that. Definitely something we are going to be thinking about more.
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One idea we are testing in Airtable but wanted to move to Coda for the ease was say:
1 Person creates a master document that is essentially a table full of info with lots of well structured @'s to explain things on hover tooltips (would that even work cross doc anyways? ). Then in this doc there are like 30 people updating various rows when the information changes.
All those 30 people would want to make use of that data in there but cross doc’ing it to their own private Coda doc and then adding additional columns and datapoints on it without having to duplicate a bunch of work.
Now that may sound like a team but it is not a company and a lot of those people just know each other on an online community and so organising some central super billing would be a nightmare so you could probably just have the main document on a free plan and then people pay themselves to cross doc the information over if they wanted too.
So its a team that is not really a team as a bunch of individual subs (you would likely earn more as well as lots of $10s add up to more than 1 $30)
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, definitely see how that could feel expensive for your clients use case.
Do the docs that you share with clients need paid features? If not, one workaround could be to create a separate free workspace where you put all those docs that you need to share with clients. That way you don’t pay for them as editors.
But this also relates something @Josh_Szwarga and I were talking about. Right now a weakness of our model is that sharing with a lot of users who just need to make light edits (pressing buttons, etc.) can feel expensive. That is also something we are thinking about how to address.
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I was chatting with the team about this and I think the scenario would work. Like you said, you just have the master doc in a free workspace and anyone who wants to use cross-doc with that doc gets on a team plan.
But I think the point you are making is that this use case is a reason for putting cross-doc in the Pro tier - is that right? Definitely getting a lot of feedback about that and it will be something we will be discussing more as a team.
Got it. Those use cases make a ton of sense. This will be a big topic for our team to discuss, so thanks for the feedback.
Exactly all those people I mentioned would just be a single person (as the data is a collaborative effort but the thing it is used for is more private as relates to that person’s clients)
So currently everyone would have to pay for a team plan for one person to make use of that pack basically so the pro would be ideal (as happy to pay)
Fist congratulations to all Codans! Version 2.0 is really a step forward 
I like paying for using a technology. It’s fair! But I feel like this pricing model is just version 1.0 
Free tier is just pointless like many already noted (maybe this is exactly the point).
Pro plan seems like the minimum to consider. But that’s a plan for personal and household stuff. Without Coda pack and some more privacy Coda is just not for business.
We pay 3600 EUR per year for a CMS, client portal, TMS, Invoicing, automated workflows, integrations, 5 TB of space, security, support, unlimited users… well pretty much all a business needs for up to 20 people. Except fast flexibility. For why Coda was so exciting to study and follow in the past couple of years.
In our case we work with hundreds of people who are just accepting tasks and delivering, which I suppose is the case for most businesses. So we are talking about thousands of $ with current pricing model.
Considering how much time is required to develop all the above-mentioned functionality and how much money would cost to just sustain what we have build ourselves… it just have to be a lot, a lot cheaper if Coda wants to get into my business plan.
Again, I love Coda’s concept and you all codans are great professionals. But to keep using it and promote (like I have done to over 200 businesses), I would love to see a verstion 2.0 of the pricing model.
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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.
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Hi @Pch, thanks for your questions on Locking & Permissions!
The locking settings apply only to users who you share docs to with “Can edit” access. There’s no change to the behaviors when you share a doc as “Can view or play” – those users still can’t make any changes. Formulas are hidden when the doc is shown as read-only, and visible in ‘play’ mode where users can make changes that aren’t saved back to the doc.
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What about “guest editors”?
Are they included in any pricing scheme?
PLease answer that because, if it is not the case, I’m going to expel all of them of my public shared docs
Guest editors count as editors when it comes to pricing. So yeah, you want to downgrade any of those to viewers to minimize impact on pricing.
I think my Coda docs just hit the price wall and died 
I have a to-do list, plus some other docs that I use because it’s really handy to be able to mix text and tables. There is no team and there are no Editors. But, I get fancy with customizing things, which is why I love Coda.
Basically I would be paying $120 /year for a to-do list and some other bonus items. It’s just not worth it…
$10 a month might not seem like a lot, but $120 is half the cost of my computer.
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Love this. When you’re getting into hundreds of customers with a simple action I would advocate a free role for one specific action and paid for more types of actions. But glad to see this is in consideration.
Agree 100% with your thoughts on the pricing model.
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2d this on small teams. $360 /person (maker) /year is a lot for a one-person “team.”
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That sounds like a bug. We aren’t enforcing any limits until December 1. Mind sharing more on support@coda.io so we can follow up directly?
Then you Codans need to be much more clear and explicit about this regard, or friction is going to increase greatly. Thanks for the clarification… but I had to ask about it
First of all, congrats for the new Coda! I love some of the new features and there are great additions.
But…
I was anxious about the pricing announcement, and it has come.
I don’t understand the model. Having the pro plan and having limits about the editors is terrible.
I have to give you a use case to be more specific:
I made a doc for our local video game cluster so that each member can add a simple mission like RT a Tweet or bake a Crowdfunding campaign, so that we help each others simply.
We used coda because it’s great and we gamified the thing to entertain the people.
BUT!
We are about 20/30 users. I’m the only maker in the doc and sometimes my associate add or tweak things, and everybody else are just adding some rows with some missions to do, and they push buttons.
So they are all in a way editors.
I would pay a fortune with your system, for editors that just sometimes add some text in a row and push buttons.
In one word, you just killed my doc…
Many of my docs actually. My workflow…
I have many other things to say but I’ll take more time later, I don’t have the time actually to focus on this.
And as an early adopter, I’m not satisfied by what you are gifting me.
Sorry for this Coda team 
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No bug, still works for now. You’re fast at replying
One thing also is that I might use it with clients.
Since there is not locking with the pro plan (maybe you should consider adding it too ) using the crossdoc be useful when sharing some datas with the client.
For example you can have a bug tracker document, where your client can report datas, and see what they need to see, while the big bug tracking thing can be in a separate document, just for you, and maybe a couple of freelance you are working with…
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