Just a suggestion to rethink your pricing. Coda’s scheme to charge only for Doc Makers is a disincentive to adopt the platform. Both Coda and an organization choosing to adopt Coda have an interest in maximizing usage broadly so that culturally within an organization the application is the go-to tool. Charging for Doc Makers at a high price per user means that Doc Makers become gatekeepers. Imagine what a frustrating pattern it would be in an organization if most people had to ask their manager to create a new meeting notes document so that they could edit it.
What’s a better pricing model? I’m not sure, but I think some kind of tiered system that can be configured to automatically jump to the next price point makes the most sense to me. Each new tier is a better deal for greater usage. All users in an organization are able to have unlimited control. The admin is notified each time usage approaches the next tier for cost control.
For example, suppose there’s just editors and viewers. Everyone has edit authority. An organization pays, say, $X/mo/editor for only active editors during a billing cycle. And “active” editors is something meaningful — not just somebody voting in a poll or correcting a typo.
$X might be $5 for up to 20 editors. $4 for up to 50, etc.
Such a scheme, I think, would remove a significant barrier to usage, incentivize adoption, and allow an organization to pay for only what they use.
I agree that the pricing needs some rethinking, but for a different reason.
I come from the personal use side of things and I think the current pricing system is much more in favor of businesses vs personal use, especially compared to similar apps.
I must admit that I kind of like current setup of pricing (for business use, for personal use its different thing). I understand your comment
but there are ways how you can setup your meeting documents in current system to avoid this.
Also I don’t think its good idea (at lest from my humble experience) to allow everyone in the company full control as you suggested, because everybody will create their own version of documents or how do they think something needs to be done or tracked etc., eventually leading to total chaos. You need some more structured approach, and certain number of people (in case of Coda Doc makers) who will setup the system and global way “how we do things” that will other use, everything else leads to confusion and chaos.
Again, you can’t expect that everybody has enough knowledge of platform, and even software in general, to be able to build and use this software optimally (or that that they have time to learn platform from scratch with other stuff they do, not to mention “I couldn’t be bothered” factor that could lead to pretty bad documents). Not to mention global “awareness” of company’s workflows, processes and grander scheme of thigs (which is also important when building any type of company software).
I pay for Coda and I am really happy with it. But I do agree that the pricing needs to be changed (not for me, I am ok with the price). The limitation in number of rows or editors are very bad to adoption, that’s why Notion made their free plan limitless, they need people on the platform to use and talk about it, generating free propaganda and then they get paid users.
Also, about your setup, I have to agree with @Marko_Petrovic that are ways to do a workaround with this kind of problem. My notes are all added to tables with a special column to use as a rich text enviroment.
I appreciate the replies and agree with @Marko_Petrovic that there is value in having some oversight. I think it is the difference between a note-taking app — where Notion is aiming — and a group tool where consistency is important. Perhaps Coda might allow for unlimited Doc Making in a user’s private space, but administrative control options over shared spaces. That would address both use cases: individual note taking and shared group documents.
I took the plunge with a trial subscription after I wrote the post above. When I set up a payment I discovered that Coda has some nice options to reduce friction while keeping costs under control. A group admin can (1) allow anyone to be promoted to a Doc Maker, (2) allow a 7-day grace period and notification or (3) disallow new Doc Makers. For my scenario, (2) solves my problem. I wish that distinction had been made clear on the pricing page.