ForumsQuestionsNew subscription prices - what do you think?


New subscription prices - what do you think?
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pawelkaleta

Posted: Oct 16, 2018
Score: 3 Reference
So this is it, new plans have been just anounced related to changes of the prices for subscription options - check your mailboxes guys.

If I understand correctly, Free plan will not contain lot of features like Hotlist (really?), Saved Searches, Task notes (we are probably talking about notes for individual tasks...), adding tasks via e-mail or "third-party apps / integrations" whatever that means (does it mean no sync with UTDL or DGT GTD anymore?).

"Equivalent" of the current Silver plan - called Individual now - will be three times more expensive comparing to current price.

What do you think?
user50

Posted: Oct 16, 2018
Score: 10 Reference
I'm looking for an alternative because the new price is too high. I've been a paid subscriber since 2010 and I am a heavy user of Toodledo at home and work.

The lack of updates, the poor iOS apps and the empty promises in these forums were bad enough but the dramatic price increase is the final nail.

The classy thing to do would be to release the "great new features" and then talk about price increases but the new owners might have become impatient and started grabbing before giving.

The really classy thing to do would be to protect your existing customer base and allow them to renew at their current rates indefinitely. It's much easier to keep existing customers happy than winning new customers.

Also notice that the price increase email doesn't mention Habits so we should expect that to disappear.


This message was edited Oct 16, 2018.
smatics

Posted: Oct 16, 2018
Score: 6 Reference
Here was my response to Aaron's email. I would suggest that anyone who feels this way let them know what we think.


Hi Aaron,

Wow! That is a massive price increase, and I believe this will be the death knell for ToodleDo.

I've been a paid subscriber to ToodleDo for many years, and even though I thought the price increase for Silver from $15 to $20 a couple of years ago put ToodleDo, which after all is "just" a To-Do app, with very poor mobile apps, nearly at the "priced too high" point. Now, you announce a massive 3-fold price increase for silver users to $60 per year???

I suspect that you will experience a mass exodus for this product. I will certainly move to something else after my current subscription runs out.

Best of luck to you.
Joyce

Posted: Oct 16, 2018
Score: 0 Reference
I'm just a little confused, I went to my subscription page and saw the "Free" "silver" @$19.99 a year and "gold" @ $29.99 no "platinum" and no "individual" Where are these hair raising new prices? I'm a little worried. Admittedly I don't use habits but I use notes, lists and outlines.
pawelkaleta

Posted: Oct 16, 2018
Score: 0 Reference
They plan to adjust the prices on January 1st, this is what they say in the email sent today. Not sure if it was sent to all users or to paid subscribers only.
aaron.c.salls

Posted: Oct 16, 2018
Score: -2 Reference
Hi all,

We are in the process of hiring engineers so that we can build upon the product. In order to do so, we need to make sure our plans and pricing are aligned. Some folks have seen the first iteration of this plan, and if you haven't gotten the email yet it's because they're still working through the send queue. You will receive it soon.

We understand that some people have questions. However, this is what we need to do to support the business and build the product our users have asked for here and in other feedback channels.

As always, we're open to all feedback. If you have any questions or concerns, you can reach me directly at [email protected].
Ummagumma

Posted: Oct 16, 2018
Score: 10 Reference
Posted by aaron.c.salls:
Hi all,

We are in the process of hiring engineers so that we can build upon the product. In order to do so, we need to make sure our plans and pricing are aligned. Some folks have seen the first iteration of this plan, and if you haven't gotten the email yet it's because they're still working through the send queue. You will receive it soon.

We understand that some people have questions. However, this is what we need to do to support the business and build the product our users have asked for here and in other feedback channels.

As always, we're open to all feedback. If you have any questions or concerns, you can reach me directly at [email protected].


Aaron,

Forgive me for being blunt, but I think you are committing suicide as a company.

Toodledo is a great service, but it simply isn't in a position to command these prices. It doesn't have the name recognition, visual design, integration with desktop or other services, or even a decent mobile client. You just made it significantly less attractive to a potential new user, and drastically raised prices on existing users, without providing anything new to attract both categories.

Toodledo Gold is now $90 /year. For comparison, a full subscription of Office 365 (with Word, Excel, Onenote, Powerpoint) that comes with 1 TB of shareable space is just ten dollars more. Per _year_. Todoist, which has significantly better name recognition and a far larger user base, is less than third the price. Evernote Premium - which is losing users after the price hike - is the same price now (well, $6 more per year).

Most medium to large organizations are on Teams / Outlook / Onenote, or Groupwise, or similar alternatives, where task management is integrated into a far wider system. They are not going to switch to a 3rd party task manager. Individuals like me are paying out of their pocket to gain a bit of extra GTD functionality with less hoop jumping - and it's a very niche user base. I can't see how you can grow the main user base without name recognition, without a large following, and with these prices. I hope I am wrong...


This message was edited Oct 16, 2018.
Kyle Otaku

Posted: Oct 16, 2018
Score: 8 Reference
Just got the email about the $60 a year charge for Toodledo starting in 2 months. WOW that's exorbitant. I will probably be becoming an ex-customer very soon. I've absolutely loved Toodledo for years because it's always been fairly simple and free for still usable functionalty, I use it daily, but for $60 a year just for basic functionality like a Hotlist, then there are better alternatives out there. If I'm going to be forking over my credit card #, which I only do VERY rarely, it's going to be for something with more bells and whistles than this.

What I had hoped you would do is leave Toodledo free alone and then add new features that are for pay (read: Gantt Chart!)... but if you're suddenly charging for what has been free for years, I'm afraid you'll need to count me out.

I have a feeling this will be becoming a "whom do we go to instead of Toodledo" thread as well. I just keyed in on Todoist from another user and was considering Trello my own self.

Sincerely hope an about-face is imminent, Astrid tried the same thing and it blew up so badly the company got bought out by Yahoo and then promptly shut down. I'd hate to see that happen again to something that's been such a great product for all these years.


This message was edited Oct 16, 2018.
J.O.D.

Posted: Oct 17, 2018
Score: 1 Reference
I will wait for my e-mail, but I will never pay for year subscription, monthly one is more expensive in the long run, but allows me to switch my services dynamically, and that has proven priceless to me during last years. So we will see, but any alternative based on just yearly renewal is out of question.

This message was edited Oct 17, 2018.
Ummagumma

Posted: Oct 17, 2018
Score: 2 Reference
I just renewed Gold at the old price, but will likely switch soon because I will not pay the new price and there’s no reason to spend a year with a service that I know I won’t be using long term. Better to start honing the new habits as soon as possible.

I do wish the new owners luck.
M

Posted: Oct 17, 2018
Score: 8 Reference
Eight-plus-year subscriber who has used TD for much longer than that, and I'll be pulling my data and going elsewhere if they don't grandfather us "longtimers" into a lower price plan. Very sad, as TD and I have been friends for a long time. Also a little nervous, because short of writing my own cloud-based SQL database for my tasks, I'm not sure what I can use. And disappointed -- because I don't use a lot of the features, and really do think the new price is just too damned high.
user50

Posted: Oct 17, 2018
Score: 2 Reference
Posted by M:
Also a little nervous, because short of writing my own cloud-based SQL database for my tasks, I'm not sure what I can use.


I had the same concern, Toodledo is very ingrained as part of my home and work life.

However, the price increase annoyed me so I forced myself to spend a couple of hours this morning playing with a competing service. It went better than I thought so now I've migrated all of my data to that system and bought their premium subscription. It has a more modern interface, better mobile apps and it accommodates my personal approach to contexts, priorities and folders without any weird workarounds.

My new service doesn't have Habits functionality but I think they're going to be removed from Toodledo anyway.

There's a lot of choice out there and I was surprised at how far some of the other services had progressed during my 8 years of using Toodledo.


This message was edited Oct 17, 2018.
KatBoy

Posted: Oct 17, 2018
Score: 2 Reference
Hey user50, I've been doing the same thing, for the same reason.

There are lots of good looking apps out there, but so far nothing that works with contexts and tags and folders.

What did you find?
J.O.D.

Posted: Oct 17, 2018
Score: 1 Reference
Yes, please user50, could you give us a hint?
SyneRyder

Posted: Oct 17, 2018
Score: 4 Reference
Personally, I'm less concerned about the pricing (though that 3x hike is much more than I expected) and more about how long Toodledo is staying around. If the price increase really does help Toodledo stay around forever, great! But I'm worried the inevitable customer attrition may just speed up its demise. I didn't realize the competition has some rather well documented developer APIs for third-party apps too.

For me, the main pricing irritation is that the Individual plan has only 1 year of task history. If it had unlimited task history, I could downgrade from Gold to Individual, and then it would only be a 2x price hike for me. I don't use Toodledo as a business & don't need the collaboration features or file uploads, but I do like the peace of mind of unlimited history (and being able to do statistics on that task history).
user50

Posted: Oct 17, 2018
Score: 2 Reference
Posted by KatBoy:
What did you find?


I went with Todoist but there are plenty of choices, I used https://alternativeto.net/ to find popular alternatives. Apologies for being coy, I was trying to avoid diverting this thread into a debate about alternatives!


This message was edited Oct 17, 2018.
smatics

Posted: Oct 17, 2018
Score: 2 Reference
Posted by SyneRyder:

For me, the main pricing irritation is that the Individual plan has only 1 year of task history. If it had unlimited task history, I could downgrade from Gold to Individual, and then it would only be a 2x price hike for me. I don't use Toodledo as a business & don't need the collaboration features or file uploads, but I do like the peace of mind of unlimited history (and being able to do statistics on that task history).


This has been an irritation of mine for some time now. Maintaining a full history cannot be that cumbersome, data retention wise, and at least before an upgrade to Gold would at least "give" you that capability. Now, there is no way for me to justify such an upgrade to "Business" when I don't use a quarter of the other features in the product anyway.

I'm also very concerned about the viability of ToodleDo as a company. Such a drastic price increase smells like desperation and trying to justify it by saying "We need to hire engineers" is really concerning.

One thing this has done has made me look at alternatives, and I am pleasantly surprised how far competitors like ToDoist has come since I last looked at them, and for less than half the price of ToodleDo's new individual plan. Their mobile apps look really nice.
Adrien Beau

Posted: Oct 17, 2018
Score: 1 Reference
Posted by smatics:
I am pleasantly surprised how far competitors like ToDoist has come since I last looked at them, and for less than half the price of ToodleDo's new individual plan. Their mobile apps look really nice.


When was the last time you looked at them? I was subscribed for one year in 2014, and fled when their redesign landed. It looked nice, but with only five or six tasks per screen, it was quite inefficient in actual use. Looking at current screenshots, this does not seem to have changed. The lack of data backup and export was also quite bad, have they improved this?
smatics

Posted: Oct 17, 2018
Score: 1 Reference
Posted by Adrien Beau:
When was the last time you looked at them? I was subscribed for one year in 2014, and fled when their redesign landed. It looked nice, but with only five or six tasks per screen, it was quite inefficient in actual use. Looking at current screenshots, this does not seem to have changed. The lack of data backup and export was also quite bad, have they improved this?


To be clear, I haven't settled on ToDoist yet, and I am going to try a few different ones (TickTick and Wunderlist) to see how they compare.

This article provides some compelling reasons why ToDoist may be worth looking at:
https://productivityist.com/why-todoist/

Backups seem to be fine:
https://get.todoist.help/hc/en-us/articles/115001799989

Integrations - this surprised me, where they've gotten to since I last looked:
https://todoist.com/integrations

I'm not seeing the UI issues you mentioned, but maybe that will be something that becomes more clear after I use it more.
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