Just started getting this now. Hopefully it’s some A/B testing that they’ll stop doing, but I’m not holding my breath

    • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      9
      ·
      3 months ago

      I get a notification every month telling me that they will charge me for my monthly Kagi subscription and every single month i feel the same:

      ‘Totally worth it!’

      • datavoid@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 months ago

        I feel like their pricing would make more sense if you could just pay for your usage, rather than forcing a subscription

        • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          3 months ago

          They do have different tiers depending on your search volume and features, so in a way they already have this. I’d hate to have to go through checkout every time i did a search.

          • drkt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            3 months ago

            Why do you think you have to go through a checkout?

            They could just pool your owed money and then charge you that at the end of the month, or let you maintain a pool that you throw money into that they take from as you use it.

            • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              3 months ago

              They have 100, 300, and unlimited for $0, $5, and $10

              How much would you be willing to pay per search? And do you know how many searches you make every month?

              For me, i pay not for the searches as such, but to not be tracked and be shown more ads than search results

              • datavoid@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                3 months ago

                I haven’t been using kagi long enough to really understand how it works yet, but it’s my understanding that they want you to pay every month, even if you had remaining searches from the previous month.

                If I pay $5 for 300 searches, why does it matter if I do them within a time frame? When someone isn’t’ searching, they aren’t really costing Kagi anything.

                Alternatively, let people pay 1.6 cents per search (or 1.8 cents or something).

                • intensely_human@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  3 months ago

                  Basically because the product they’re selling isn’t “You get to do a search whenever” but “You get to do a search this month”.

                  The reason for that, based on my experience with various web startups, is they want to maximize the predictability of their resource usage in terms of staff and servers.

                  If millions of people pay their $5 and then don’t use their searches, then in the extreme case Kagi could be maintaining servers twenty years later in anticipation that their customers might use those searches.

                  It’s an edge case, but it illustrates the point.

                  Also, on the customer side, there’s a psychological benefit to free things. Free as in “already paid for; no cost to using it”.

                  If you have something that can be used this month but not any other month, then using it is free. If using it now means you can’t use it next year, then there’s still a cost to it despite it already being paid for.

                  • datavoid@lemmy.ml
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    3
                    ·
                    3 months ago

                    they want to maximize the predictability of their resource usage in terms of staff and servers.

                    I think you are definitely correct here. However, you are overlooking the actual main goal of every business - making as much money as possible.