[HN Gopher] Why Kagi launched "no use, no pay"
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Why Kagi launched "no use, no pay"
Author : AnhTho_FR
Score : 41 points
Date : 2025-04-01 11:05 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (getlago.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (getlago.substack.com)
| leejoramo wrote:
| The first time I remember seeing a "no use, no pay" plan was with
| the ProVUE's Panorama X excellent database application for macOS.
|
| https://provue.com/
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| oh this is interesting because I feel like it wouldn't work
| with infra as that runs in the background and you almost never
| have zero usage on a DB.
| godman_8 wrote:
| IaaS is mostly like this already. There are some things where
| it's not used like VMs which serverless tries to solve.
| Additionally people tend to waste tons of resources with IaaS
| because they don't scale on usage.
| rmholt wrote:
| Is there anything that prevents Kagi from doing an OpenAI and
| going for profit?
| pbronez wrote:
| Kagi is already for profit, they just haven't raised a huge
| amount of money:
|
| > Kagi can afford this because they go further than being
| bootstrapped and profitable: As a Public Benefit Corporation,
| not beholden to maximizing shareholder value.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I'm always interested in new ways to handle
| billing/subscriptions/etc and this is a cool change.
|
| I recently heard of a payment strategy that I liked a lot though
| I understand it's hard to explain to customers. John Siracusa's
| Hyperspace [0] app has the following options:
|
| * Monthly, recurring
|
| * Monthly, one-time
|
| * Yearly, recurring
|
| * Monthly, one-time
|
| * Lifetime, one-time
|
| More details in the developer's own words here [1]. The
| interesting options are the Monthly and Yearly one-time options.
| For anyone in the Apple ecosystem you can technically get this
| behavior by purchasing a subscription and immediately cancelling
| it (since you will get the full time period you paid for still).
| But I really like this payment style especially for an app like
| this where I don't want to pay-per-use (that feel punitive) but I
| don't really have ongoing data-deduplication needs (at least the
| features the product currently offers). It's a "once every year
| or so" and I might need to run it multiple times on different
| directories/different settings.
|
| "Time-based unlocks" might be a better way to think about it.
| There are lots of products I would 1000000% pay for 1 month of,
| if it auto-cancelled, but I don't need it every month. Often I
| just skip using the product completely since I have no idea if I
| cancel if they will close my account right away and/or try to
| refund me. I just don't want to have to set a calendar item to
| remember to cancel a day before it renews.
|
| I'm not opposed to subscriptions, developers need to make money
| and platforms/OS change all the time (especially in mobile) so
| there is ongoing maintenance. But the issue for me are apps I
| only need for a little bit or infrequently. If Adobe offered a "1
| month, no renewal" then there is a good chance I'd still be using
| Photoshop instead of switching to Pixelmator Pro.
|
| [0] https://hypercritical.co/hyperspace/
|
| [1] https://hypercritical.co/hyperspace/#purchase
| poincaredisk wrote:
| It sounds like a good option to have with confusing phrasing.
| "Buy access for 1 month" would be a lot more clear than
| "monthly" which to me indicates something recurring (I'm not a
| native speaker).
|
| It also sounds like an option that reduces sales in almost all
| cases, so it will never be widely adopted.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| As much as I like lifetime purchases I think for software
| products it creates too many liabilities for all parties.
| Probably in the fine print you need a carve out saying it won't
| actually be provided in perpetuity (what software is?). As a
| purchaser I don't think it's realistic to really expect the
| software forever. I think of it more as a supporter/founder
| tier with various privileges that will one day end - and it
| should probably be advertised as such.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| What makes kagi users more of a community than other search
| engine users? I imagine it's a somewhat self-selecting group so I
| can't tell if it's just verbiage or a meaningful distinction.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| They all pay, it's a distinction to "every other search engine"
| and their users.
|
| They have a Discord server where news and updates are released,
| hyped and discussed.
|
| Kagi is appreciated and people like to associate with
| appreciated things
| derwiki wrote:
| They sent me a yellow tshirt. If I ever run into someone with
| the same tshirt, we can high-five and say "same team!"
| superultra wrote:
| I'm really curious about this because it actually incurs some
| interesting possible customer service issues. Say someone signs
| up, then usage lapses for a while. Then they use it. Bam they're
| charged. Will they remember that they signed up? Some of these
| edge cases are defined in the article but remain unanswered. It
| sounds like the team at Kagi didn't even think about them, which
| is interesting. Still I'd like to know the answer.
| siquick wrote:
| I've been paying for Kagi for about 18 months and it's pretty
| much the only subscription I have that it's never crossed my mind
| to cancel it.
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(page generated 2025-04-01 23:01 UTC)