Bucking the trend: A more affordable pricing for Kafkai

I'm excited to unveil a major update that will make SEO-friendly content generation more accessible to our valued customers.

On the 5th of July, 2023, we released a major revision of our prices.

This post contains important information on changes to our pricing plans including our 30-day money-back guarantee. If you're a Kafkai customer or are considering being our customer, I strongly suggest that you read through this post. When we acquired and started working on Kafkai, we identified two main issues which were pointed out to us by our customers:

• Quality
• Pricing

Better quality

We moved to fix the quality issue by using better and newer data, and also updating to the latest generation models. This was released in December 2022. Customers responded well to these changes, and we saw a decrease in churn due to quality.

Better pricing

The next step for us is to address the issue of pricing. This is difficult because it presents a move between opposing ends: Increasing prices from many segments of the markets (read: our costs), but at the same time the reluctance of customers to spend money also because of that same movement by those same markets.

Difficult tightrope in difficult times

We are a small independent business, without backing from any venture capital. We intend to stay that way, and so we understand that we cannot simply throw money to subsidize our customers just for the sake of getting market share. We can't "ride it out" with someone's else money. At the same time, we also do not want to continue contributing to the bottom line of the big behemoth international corporations known as "Big Tech" which we rely our infrastructure and some parts of our businesses on. They say times are tough for them and have increased prices and laid off people in the tens of thousands. But they also had made profits in the billions for the past few years. It doesn't make sense to us to contribute to that.

Bucking the trend and doing what we do best

We refuse to simply increase prices just because everyone else around us, left and right, is doing so. Times are tough for everyone: Us and you, our customers. So we do what we do best: Sitting down, really figuring out what our customers require from us, and really cutting down on costs through whatever means we can ourselves, based on our collective knowledge, experience, and our customer feedback. Our customers tell us that they don't like to pay for a subscription service when they only need to create content just a few times a month. Our customers also told us what is most valuable to them, what they want to do more, and what they don't need. We've also figured out how to lower our costs and reduce our independence of Big Tech, without affecting customer experience. We don't have venture capitalists or big shareholders to please, so with the savings we will make, we pass it back to you, our customers. So today I am happy to announce that we're lowering our prices on all of our packages:

• Hobbyist: $9/month, 50 monthly articles
• Writer: $29/month, 100 monthly articles
• Blogger: $49/month, 200 monthly articles
• Professional: $129/month, 1000 monthly articles

Note: The pricing, niches and languages are subject to change as we continue to evolve and improve Kafkai. Please refer to the pricing page for the current pricing and plan information.

Better customer experience

As part of the new pricing plans, we're also moving away from Paddle and will use Stripe as our payment provider. Because the plans on Paddle and Stripe are not interchangeable, the plans on Paddle are considered as "old plans" and will still contain the old pricing, while the new pricing will be reflected only on the "new plans" which we implement only on Stripe. There are a few reasons for using Strip instead of staying on Paddle:

• Stripe easily allows single payments alongside subscriptions
• Stripe gives better control against fraud and abuse

The first reason directly affects our customer experience when they find their current plan inadequate and needed more. In the past, they are required to upgrade to a more expensive subscription. Using Stripe, it will be easier for us to offer a one-time payment method in the future to better handle temporary customer needs. The second reason indirectly affects our customer experience. Too many people try to take advantage of the trial period or even outright fraud to generate free articles. We are a small team and cannot afford to spend our time handling these issues. We'd rather spend time working towards making the product better for you, our customers. Using Stripe allows us more control over how we handle payments. Through Stripe's anti-fraud mechanisms, we also hope to mitigate fraudulent usage better and spend more time on what matters.

Removal of the 30-day money-back guarantee

The 30-day money-back guarantee program was meant to allow prospects to try out Kafkai without risk. In 2019, this was helpful to our customers in helping them figure out if generative AI is something they need at a time when generative AI was only starting to be commercialized through SaaS products. Fast forward to 2023 and this is no longer true anymore. Kafkai's technology has improved alongside the improvements of generative AI technologies as a whole. The product itself is not complex: Customers who signed up to test Kafkai could immediately experience value from it and decide if it's something that they want without having to do complex settings or integration. The 30-day money-back guarantee has unfortunately also been a source of abuse. This took time away from more important work that we need to do such as product improvements. By removing it, we can focus on giving better value to our customers.

Reduction of the trial quota

Similarly, with the change in pricing this time round, we are reducing the articles quota for trials from 25 articles to 10 articles. We believe with the improvement of the technology that powers Kafkai, customers can conclude if Kafkai is something that fits their needs more quickly.

What happens if you are still on the old plans on Paddle?

If you're currently on one of the old plans on Paddle, this will affect you in certain ways.

• If you're still on the old plans which are on Paddle, we'll still honour them as they are. They will continue to be renewed as of now if no action is taken.
• You are still able to upgrade or downgrade your plan current old plan to another old plan on Paddle. There will be a time when you will not be able to do this in the future, but for now, you can.
• Once you cancel your current "old plan", you will not be able to subscribe to another old plan on Paddle. If you re-subscribe to Kafkai, you will be subscribing through Stripe with one of the new plans.
• IMPORTANT: The old plans on Paddle and the new plans on Stripe are not interchangeble. We will not pro-rate you if you decide to move to one of the new plans. We suggest that you wait until your current old plan to run its course and re-subscribe to one of the new plans.

Conclusion

We hope that the new pricing and methods we've implemented will make it easier for you, our customers, where you can All of us at Kafkai are thrilled to introduce our new affordable pricing plans, making our AI generative product accessible to writers and businesses of all sizes. With the transition to Stripe, we hope to have a safer and better experience for our customers. As always, if you have any questions, you can contact us at [email protected]