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0 pointsBrian_K_White2y ago0 comments

I don't understand the pricing. (Well, I do understand, I understand that it's the same anti-consumer gimmick as gym memberships.)

On the $5 tier it's 1.7 cents per search for the first 300, then 1.5 cents after that. As expected I blew past the 300 before the month was out and am currently sitting at a total of almost $9 for this month and there are still 3 more days to go, and this includes being away for labor day weekend and only using my phone (without kagi) for a couple days, and this is after populating and using a bunch of bookmarks specifically to cater to the fact that I now pay for searches. And this is only my laptop. I have not used kagi on my phone or anything else yet.

I haven't used bookmarks in 20 years and don't particularly want to. I normally don't even have the toolbar visible but now I had to un-hide it and add that clutter back to my browser.

So I'm both paying money and contorting my usage pattern.

I guess now that the first month is about done, I can say it looks like I should go up to the $10 plan, where the searches are only 1 cent, but only for the first 1000, and only if I actually use all 1000! If I pay $10 and only do 250 searches that month, then they weren't 1 cent were they?

As much as I like it, I don't know if I'm going to keep it.

I will not pay $10 or $25 just to have it sitting there available "in case", and I apparently will at least some times (who knows how often? every month? 3 out of 12?) will blow past the $5 an end up paying $10 anyway.

If I complicate my usage to cater to kagi so that my default is ddg and just invoke kagi sometimes when I feel like it would help, then I'll probably forget it exists most of the time and do about 10 per month and pay 50 cents each. Probably only one or two months of that and I'll just decide it's not worth $5 for a handful of searches and just cancel it.

The only way it will be useful for me is if it can just be the default search that I don't have to worry about.

They should just figure out whatever the fair per search price is and bill that. The stupid tiers are probably going to drive me off.

0 comments

freediver2y ago

You shouldn't need to be counting them. It was a necesseity to make sure we stay in business. We figured out ways to reduce costs in the meantime and we will be going back to $10/mo for unmetered searches this month.

Brian_K_WhiteOP2y ago

I appreciate that. As long as you're still hashing things out I'm willing to give it more time. I really like the small web concept. What I would like most is not even $10 unmetered, or even $2 unmetered, but simply $n per transaction, as long as you are obviously doing the work of counting them anyway.

$10 unmetered must always be a fallacy anyway. Surely I can't start up "bkwsearch" and sell searches for 3 cents each, and pay you only $10 for my million$ skin.

So I say don't even pretend.

Except really there probably needs to be both options, because some people value predictability more than any specific amount. So $10 or $20 or any number that never changes is better (for them) than paying only $2 on average but unpredictable each month.

I neither want to pay $10 for $2 worth of usage, nor soak you for $30 worth of usage while only paying $10. Even more than that I don't want to have to think about it to make sure if I choose the N tier that I'm making more or less full use of the N tier.

I appreciate that you took the time to read an individual users complaint, whatever you end up doing. Thanks.

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