In December 2008, when we introduced paid accounts at Wikidot, there was a lot of internal debate about the structure of paid plans, billing, payment processing, etc. We were having long negotiations with banks about card processing, which were very difficult because we were a new company, without any payment processing history, and we were often treated as high-risk business.
At the time, we decided to structure our plans with yearly payments only. It seemed much easier for us, and saved us headaches from monthly billing and invoicing. So right now, when you want to upgrade your account you need to pay for a full year up-front, and need to manually prolong your plan after each year.
Yearly payments, as we've learned, have serious disadvantages. They increased risk factor when we wanted to process credit cards directly, and a few banks turned away from the deal mainly because we were offering only long-term, up-front paid plans. If, for some reason Wikidot went out of business, let us say after 6 months, the bank would be left with customers claiming refunds. This was of course not the real case. But that is why we have to use 3-rd party payment processing now, like PayPal or MultiCards.
Many users suggested to us that we should switch to monthly payments. There would be no steep up-front payment, no long-term contract. The crucial point is that it is easier to pay $20 than $240 for a Pro+, and much easier to pay $5 than $50 for a Pro Lite. This, as I believe, would make our subscription plans much more affordable and accessible.
We will keep yearly payments only for Pro+, and only per individual request.
We have already started negotiations with payment providers to directly accept credit card payments. Probably this would take some time, so I cannot give you a precise timeline. Another benefit is that we will not have to forward our users to 3rd party websites anymore — we will just ask for credit card data, and complete the upgrade in a few steps.
In the following weeks we will also look at our plans and see if they can be simplified. If you have ideas and would like to share your opinion, please do!
Another thing that we will introduce later is an affiliate program so that existing users can recommend Wikidot and get credits which they can use to purchase Wikidot services or cash-out. Ideally, it would work both ways, for both the referred and referring person.
Any comments and suggestions are welcomed, as always!
As a small-time user I would be very unhappy if you drop yearly payments for Pro Lite accounts.
I upgraded from Free to Pro Lite for a few of the additional features and to show my support for Wikidot.
For me, as a personal user, it's a lot easier to make one sensible sized payment per year rather than have to pay per month. The annual charge for ProLite is quite affordable in one chunk. I realise you are attracting a lot more bigger users these days and have to provide the type of service they expect but please don't forget about your smaller users. Unless, of course, you really consider us too much trouble and would prefer us to go elsewhere?
Actually, I believe the opposite is true. From my experience, individual users strongly prefer monthly payments, while companies sometimes choose yearly to process fewer invoices, if they can afford paying up-front.
I forgot to mention that the payments would be (automatically) recurring, which means you only need to make a purchase once, and we will charge your card automatically every month. You should not be bothered with manual prolonging each month.
I agree that if you had to manually prolong the subscription, this would be a nightmare, and we could see a dramatic drop of happiness here. But since this is fully automatic, and is better for your pocket, I do not see a reason not to like it.
I hope this explanation helps!
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
How about PayPal payments, via the account balance? PayPal does not support automatic billing for that, so will people be forced to manually renew it each month? I think the better option here is to allow people to order several months at once. Just select from a drop-down box "12" and you're able to pay for a whole year in advance. Select "36" and you're paying 3 years in advance.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Doh. I did not realize PayPal requires a credit card to allow recurring payments. However I think we will come with a solution that suits your needs, but monthly payments will be the default payment method.
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
Monthly payments as default is fine, but for business users it is really annoying to have to process 12 invoices of 5 Euro each. Invoices are expensive to process in a business (perhaps as much as 10-20 Euro per document), so you're adding considerably to the cost of the service if you stop supporting yearly payments.
Portfolio
Exact !
Adding monthly payments is a good idea, but I don't understand why you can't offer both monthly and yearly payment plans. Even though I'm a Pro+ user and I'll have that option, albemarle makes a strong case for keeping yearly payments. Many services even offer a small discount for paying for a year or more in advance. It seems like it would be less hassle for everyone if the option to pay for a year was still available to everyone.
As far as the plans go, one thing that I think is a bit "cheap" is the limits on private members for pro lite and pro accounts. Currently you only allow 10 and 20 respectively. I'm not exactly sure what a fair number would be, but something like 50 and 200 would make more sense to me. You're really limiting potential "private" business with those small limits. I don't think you'd have to worry about too many downgrading from Pro+. I was thinking about smaller groups like my golf league that has about 25-30 members. If those groups wanted to set up a private site, they'd have to pop for a Pro+ account, which might be a bit expensive and have features they don't need.
I'd also like to see file size limitations dropped or set to a much larger limit for Pro+. 50 MB per file is pretty limiting,
-Ed
Community Admin
Thanks for the comment. In fact there is a very strong suggestion from the banks against going yearly, because of risk assessment I mentioned in the blog post. This was one of the reasons we got rejected several times a year ago.
There is a great blog post on Basecamp's blog about it too — but they switched to monthly even before launch, and we kept the plans yearly and found other payment processors.
And we really would like to get a real merchant account to process payments at this point.
File limits for Pro+ is something we will definitely look at! We had technical difficulties with large files before, but I guess we can look at this again.
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
While you're at it, would you please consider increasing file size limits for ProLite accounts as well? Thanks in advance!
Eduardo R. Ribeiro
http://www.etnolinguistica.org
Do you have a suggestion for the Pro Lite limit? I assume you're asking because you have a particular file size in mind that you need…?
My guess is that if Wikidot decides to increase all Pro account file size limits, the highest "Pro Lite" will go is to the current "Pro" level.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Hmmm, if that happens (i.e. increasing the file size limit with ProLite accounts to 50MB), it would be a lot more than I'd expect. In fact, what I had in mind was something more modest, like 30MB. The problem is that any number will be somehow arbitrary. Sometimes I can't upload a file because it is 25.5 or 26MB, a little over the limit. But the same will happen eventually even if the limit is 50MB. Large files are indeed very rare in my sites; they are the exception, never the rule. Most of the users of my sites, in South America, have very slow internet connections and I'll always try to keep the files as small as possible. But it would be nice to be able to add larger files in the rare cases when that is necessary. I'm more than happy with the storage currently available; whenever I ran out of space in the future, that will mean the site has outgrown its original shell, and it's time to upgrade; I'd happily upgrade to a Pro+ account then. But that natural, gradual growth will take a while in my case. I just find the current file size limits an unnecessary obstacle to that growth.
Eduardo R. Ribeiro
http://www.etnolinguistica.org
Okay. I strongly recommend you look at 7-zip. Not only is it open source (unlike WinRAR), but it also has far better compression…
You'll probably notice that you can get your files under the limit using 7-zip, if they are just slightly too big using normal compression.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Thanks, Shane. I'll look into that.
Eduardo R. Ribeiro
http://www.etnolinguistica.org
I'll also note that it works better with different formats. Video files seem to compress to about 10% of their original size, whilst some files only compress to about 98% of their original size.
Trying to compress a 7zip file with 7zip (yes, I tried) compresses to 101% (i.e. makes it bigger), probably due to adding some extra information to the file.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Agreed.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
I'd rather pay 50e a year for once than 60e in parts (which is 5e a month).
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I tried to find the prices for EU citizens in euros, but I couldn't find them. There is no easily accessible and visible info on that. And once you start the process of paying, in ahalf way you get the info that those 49 dollars became 49 euros. Yes, there is also a VAT of 22% for EU citizens (the Polish VAT), but even with this VAT it is still not 49 euros. 49 dollars + 22% is 59,78 dollars, lets say 60 dollars, which is NOT 49 euros, but 44 euros, according to the current exchange rate. And depending on the exchange rate, it can be even more. Why do EU citizens have to pay more than non-EU citizens? Why not one price in one fixed currency, and the other adapts depending on the exchange rate? Let's say, 49 dollars, and when I pay from EU, I pay in euros according to the exchange rate of that moment, plus 22%? Is this so difficult?
Well, I have already talked to some other Wikidot members living in EU, and they told me they don't mind paying more, but evne then, I really do think that you should clearly state the price in euros at your plans page, and it must be clearly stated that this price goes only for EU citizens because of the VAT of 22% (Polish VAT). You are obliged to give this info, so no EU citizen be surprised once he starts the payment process. EU citizens, also, have the right to know in advance what is that they will pay before they start the payment process.
Also, I don't like the decision of removing the possibility of yearly payment. I thought that your were planning to ADD the possibility of montly payment (which is a good idea), not to SUBSTITUTE the existing way of payment. I agree with Ed: usually, there is a possibility of montly payment, but also a small discount for a yearly payment. You don't have to give that discount, but at least keep the yearly payment together with the montly one. There should be a variety of ways of payment, because you have many different customers from many different parts of the world in very different economical and financial situations. Give them the possibility to choose the most convenient way to pay.
I also agree with Ed in relation to limitation of file sizes and number of members for Pro Lite and Pro accounts.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
We are strongly considering switching only to one currency, USD most likely. This would introduce single pricing for all users, and we would not need to adapt to (sometimes rapidly) changing exchange ratios. Keeping different prices for EU and non-EU users was not our intention, but it did not work out in this sense.
Individual customers from EU would need to pay the price + 22% VAT. This would effectively mean lowering prices for EU users, and removing the currency-conversion confusion once for all.
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
I am really glad because your thoughts are going into this direction… :)
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
VAT is a tax — Wikidot lose it to the Polish government.
Why should Wikidot get less money from EU citizens than they get from non-EU citizens?
To my mind, approximately half and half is a good way to do it.
(I pay VAT.)
Rurwin, I don't mind paying Polish VAT, I do mind paying more for the same Wikidot services than American or Australian members. I have already explained it:
In November last year, the difference was even greater: EU citizens had to pay the amount that is Wikidot services + 22% + 22%. This of course depends on the exchange rate, and now this difference is smaller, but I think that the most rightful thing would be one price in one currency, with 22% more for EU citizens.
Do the same. Calculate 49 dollars + 22%, and then look at the exchange rate and tell me if you get 49 euros. I bet you don't.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Brunhilda, I think I remember Michal replying to one of your posts (on this page I believe) and stated that when they introduce monthly payments they would also make it so that all payments had to be done in US dollars.
I assume that then, the currency conversion would be done automatically by some other service provider (the credit card payment gateway, for example).
Can't find the post with a quick look, so perhaps I am mistaken.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
I know Shane, I just wanted to explain the problem to rurwin, since it seemed he got it wrong.
Michal didn't say when, but he said they are seriously thinking of removing the euro prices and to pass to only one currency, and I salute this decision. It is right here:
http://blog.wikidot.com/blog:monthly-payments/comments/show#post-754225
This is done by our banks. Wikidot charges my account in dollars, and the bank pays them in dollars, then they take from my account the amount in euros according to the current exchange rate. The same happens when you are abroad and pay with your CC. If I am in Serbia, I pay with my CC that is linked to my account in Spain. The shops in Serbia charge in dinars, but my account is charged for the amount of euros according to the current exchange rate between dinar and euro. This can vary each day and it does not depend neither on customer or seller.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Yes, I see what you mean.
The problem though is not that the EU are paying more, it is that everyone else is paying less because the dollar fell. Until a couple of years ago the Euro and the dollar were about the same value, so it was reasonable to use the same magic number for both. I assume that Wikidot decided on a price of 49.90 because that is what they need to make a profit. At that price they were making more money off the rest of the world, because they did not pay VAT. Now the rest of the world pay less than the ex-VAT EU price.
Wikidot receive:-
Rest of the world: $49.90 = €38.4979 (bank rate)
Europe: €49.90 - €9.00 = €40.90
I would not say to Wikidot "Your income has reduced because half of your customers are now paying less. So you should take less money from your other customers too,"
I am not sure I understand this, but I found this in my PMs. These are calculations from November 17th 2009 and according to the exchange rate from that day.
Today, the exchange rate is different, and numbers are more fair. But imagine paying in euros on Nov. 17th 2009…
That is why I think that one currency price is the best solution. Wikidot always gets the same amount in dollars no matter where it comes from or when (which is fair), and EU citizens pay what they have to pay both to Wikidot and to Polish state and not a cent more, nor less (which is also fair).
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
This is actually good for me and will probably give me incentive to upgrade to Pro+ sooner. Actually a lot of my needs are being met according to the accepted wishes so I am very happy with all that is going on.
While I don't terribly mind monthly payments, this seems very, very odd. Go to any other subscription-based site, and you'll likely get an offer for a discount to pay yearly rather than monthly (if you are even given a chance to pay monthly). Why is Wikidot so much different than all of these?
Aren't credit card fees for merchants something like X (fixed) plus Y%? Seems to me either you lose out, or we do if someone has to pay for the extra overhead. Hmm, maybe that's why the banks want you to do it that way? :)
I definitely vote for the monthly payment option to be added. It is almost a necessity for low-budget persons like myself with only Social Security income to live on, and THAT stretched to the max with little to play with each month. That little seems to always manage to disappear with one crisis or another for ourselves or loved ones, pets, or yearly licensing cars, car breakdowns, etc. etc. not to mention such as medical emergencies. So a (gulp) $50 required all in one chunk is almost unpalatable to swallow!
As far as Paypal not doing monthly payments, they do, or did at least as of approx. 1 yr. ago at which time I authorized paying $10 a month to a particular business I was helping. I had done that for at least a couple years. They regularly deducted it from my checking account as I recall. I had to quit for financial reasons unsustainable.
My vote goes with adding a monthly option to the yearly, and yes, in most cases a slight fee is obtained over an even division otherwise of the yearly.
There is always a "Better Way"! Together WE can find IT and make IT a "Cradle for Humanity"!
That's right, from an account or credit card — but not from the PayPal balance. I've set PayPal up so that it doesn't take any money from my bank account unless I tell it to, and therefore I use the PayPal balance to purchase everything.
That works with eBay, the Wikidot payment system as of last year when I bought a Pro Lite account, and a couple of games that I have paid for access to using my PayPal balance.
An example is EVE Online. It automatically renews a player's subscription every month for all but one payment method - paying via PayPal balance. That also happens to be the reason why I pay them using PayPal and not using any other method.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
My suggestions
For small plans like 20 Euros let us pay for an year.. that would be easy
for bigger plans monthly would be better option