1Password subscription fees policy - suggestion
Hello, I'm happy 1Password user on Mac (home), Windows (work) nad iOS (iPhone and iPad). When I saw Your announcement I was frightened for first few seconds... until I've read you'll still be selling and upgrading standalone model (without monthly fees).
There is one huge problem with monthly fees for using apps in the world of internet. Internet is a little bit like "one big country". Unfortunately real world is so far from that - in this case - when you look at it in terms of wealth of societies and purchasing power of money (currency). Monthly fee of 2.99$ is indeed small in countries like USA, Germany, UK, France etc. But most of the countries are much poorer than those mentioned before and the purchasing power of money is much smaller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage). I live in Poland which is in EU, but is still at the end of counties list in EU as far as wealth and earnings. Average disposable income for person living in Poland is 1/3 of disposable income for person living in USA. Translating this to monthly fee it is like the monthly fee for US citizen was 9$ instead of 3$ per month. As you can see it is much more expensive for polish citizen than US citizen - even though the price is the same (but the income is much smaller).
Another aspect is that one paid internet subscription may not be a problem, but as we can see more and more companies is going this path. And when you realize that you pay for quite a few things monthly (Spotify, Netflix, 1Password, TextExpander, iCloud disk space, etc.) it becomes quite a significant position in home's budget - again it is much much more painful in poorer countries (which is most of countries in the world when you compare to USA, UK, Gemany or France).
I know that one may say that I don't have to move to subscription model, but that doesn't solve the problem for either side (developer or customer), does it?
The service is ready and deployed so the more people in the world subscribes, the more profit the company has. But people need to be able to afford the service (and remember, not one service, but few of them and in time - there will be surely more).
There is actually quite simple solution to that, which almost none company is implementing. The price should be adjusted to the market (country). One company that does it is Spotify (http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2014/05/07/map-reveals-price-spotify-premium-differs-us-dollar-around-world/#gref) and it is great. A lot of my friends at work pay for Spotify because they can afford it. They wouldn't pay for it if the price was the same as in UK. We have win-win case here. Company makes money (less per user than in UK, but much more than it would earn if it kept UK price across the globe) and the users are happy because they can afford the service and advertise it to others. I'm sure there is technical possibility to identify country of a payee (by attached credit card maybe?) and I hope companies start act like Spotify - they will surely increase their profit then.
Will you think of implementing similar solution (subscription fee depending on country)? I and millions of users would love to see that coming.
1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Not Provided
Sync Type: Not Provided
Comments
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Apple recently improved support for this, by making changes to their territory pricing, especially for subscriptions:
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Hi folks,
Thanks for the feedback on this! Our 1Password.com subscription services are relatively new offerings. We do hope that in the future we'll be able to offer more flexible/accommodating payment options. At the moment we have a lot of other irons in the fire but this is a point that we'd like to visit once we've got some of that cleared off.
Thanks!
Ben
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Great to hear that. I hope you'll be able to work on it as soon as possible. I'm willing to pay 1$/month for the individual service (keep in mind my 1/3 of average US citizen monthly income) or 2$/month for 1Password Family (even prefer Family option as we both - my wife and I - use 1Password). Poland has almost 38 million citizens. Let's assume - very pessimistically - that only 10.000 people will buy Your service in Poland for 1$. It is still 120.000$ per year in comparison to nothing :)
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Hi @Solos , While I agree with you entirely — the average wage here in Thailand for 90% of the population is $6/day. Based on that, the costs of a 1Password account is half of my day's wages – every month, leaving me with $3 for my remaining daily costs. However, compared to $65 for the full standalone version and considering the fact that the apps for all OS are included in the price — including future upgrades — even though the app is expensive for me, the subscription solution will allow me to purchase more shoes and clothes for my children in the long run.
Nevertheless, I would greet more flexible territorial pricing for subscriptions :)
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While we are making pricing suggestions, allow me to make one. Currently options are individual, and families up to 5 (I'm not including teams). Many users, like me, have only 2 members in a family, husband and wife. Why not modify individual acts to include spouse (or one other member), and have families be 3-x members?
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Thanks for the feedback, folks.
While I do certainly appreciate the different pay scales across the globe do consider that it doesn't actually cost us any less to offer the service anywhere else in the world. We have some fixed expenses, and as such that is part of what determines the price, regardless of where in the world we offer the service.
Hopefully in the future we can come up with an offering that will have a lower barrier to entry for folks in countries with less spending power.
Ben
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What I'd really like to see, and already suggested, is that we are able to be billed in our own currencies.
I'm in Canada and even though AgileBits is a registered Canadian company, I'm at the continued mercy of the current exchange rates at the date of renewal.
Maybe if we see that the exchange rate for local currency -> USD is particularly good, it be nice to be able to pay for an additional year to our subscription.Also, one other question.
if we want to add another member to the family beyond what our subscription includes; how much is it?0 -
@skippingrock Thanks for the feedback. We have indeed hear that before, but at the moment we aren't far enough along with the new 1Password service to handle multiple currencies — it's a pretty tough thing to set up. We're trying to stick to the standard that most online services have of USD for now. Perhaps this will change in the future. In the meantime, we do appreciate the feedback and support.
if we want to add another member to the family beyond what our subscription includes; how much is it?
It's $1 per month for each additional member. You can always check the pricing page for the most up-to-date info on this. :)
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