By making it feel a finite resource, some percentage of the users will start to ration their use of your service and/or do some deliberation before using it ("I kinda want to look that up, but I don't know if I want to spend one of my searches"), and introducing that kind of usage friction can even lead to a subtle resentment of your service.
One of the reasons I decided to skip Kagi for now.
I literally looked at Kagi like a week or two ago from a link here. I really liked it, and I've really been hating Google search more and more each day. But I concluded that 1000 searches felt too limiting, and $25 felt too expensive, so I passed hoping a price change would come at some point in the future.
And voila! Just signed up for $10 unlimited. Probably won't even use 1000/month, but psychologically it just feels so much better.
That's a bit misleading. If the search engine really is that good, you should use it more, and then all of a sudden you'll hit the cap. I probably don't search that much now but that's because it's not worth the trouble.
And I don’t want to think about how much I search.
Comically, the biggest problem I have with signing up since $10 isn’t that much is that I don’t want to have to log into kagi to prove my account. I search on my phone, work computers, random terminals, etc etc. Having to userid and password to all these places disrupts my current UX of 1) open browser, 2) type search (maybe go to ddg.com first).
Changing to 1) open browser, 2) log into kagi, 3) search increases my time by 100x
I usually use the same browser, but I use incognito or fresh browsers at least once or twice a day.
FWIW, I searched less with Kagi, mostly because I needed fewer tries ;)
In practice the opposite happens. Because Kagi is presumeably so good, people use it less, because they find stuff faster. Something that would require 2-3 searches on Google is just one search on Kagi.
Anecdotal evidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37008132
But seriously, I've seen this comment so many times now, that I'm curious: What is it that you worry about exactly?
Amazon doesn’t make me subscribe and I can buy 100 hours and use them over 10 years for all they care. I’ve had monthly bills that are a penny from glacier.
I don’t think this pricing is because it’s hard on Kagi. I think it’s a dark pattern that once people subscribe they just autopay forever. My dad subscribed to dial up aol until last year. He hasn’t had a phone line for 15 years.
You think kagi is going to not charge people if they do zero searches?
They’ve already made it a finite resource by charging $5/month for 300 searches. I’m already rationing. They’re just saying it’s $5 if you do 1 or 300. There’s already friction. But friction to dark pattern you into paying more.
I mean it’s their prerogative and they can charge whatever they want.
I just don’t want another monthly fee. I’d rather just pay once and be done. Sell search tokens or something.
I'd argue that in many cases - including this one - the issue with subscriptions is simply that they are overpriced from the customer's perspective. Reasons for this could be greed, a desire to get to a self-sufficient revenue point too early, worrying about the handful of users that will abuse any sort of unlimited plan. From the customer's perspective, if the cost-vs-benefits don't feel right, then they'll complain about a subscription, but it's not /really/ the main problem in most cases.
The most "fair" plan for e.g. Netflix would be if I paid for each thing I watch, but that is effectively a "tax" on usage and negatively affects my usage patterns (from both my perspective and theirs). For example, I'd be super hesitant to browse and try out stuff I might not like. On the flip side, Netflix has now passed 15USD/mo and while it's not a huge chunk of change, I don't feel like I get 15 dollars of value out of it, so I'm thinking of cancelling. If the subscription was an absurdly low 1USD/mo, I wouldn't care about the subscription at all.
Kagi's situation is unfortunate for them because they are trying to get people to pay for something that we normally think of as free, so they probably need to lower the price point, at least for now.
> Amazon doesn’t make me subscribe and I can buy 100 hours and use them over 10 years for all they care
Well, sure, getting a customer's money up front for something intangible that they may never use and whose cost to you trends towards zero anyway is something they're happy to sell you. :)
If I search five times a month, charge me $0.05 a search. If I search 2000 times, charge me $10. If I search 2001 times, just charge me ten dollars.
Still no need to think about it, no need to lock into a subscription, but you also don’t have to worry about blowing your credit card up if you have a research paper due or something.
Of course, no one does this because you’re right, it’s purely a dark pattern.
Exactly to a T how I feel about Khanmigo. I pay for it because I love the idea of a maths tutor in my pocket that wont make me feel stupid, even if by accident, for forgetting something simple.
But there's a "battery" that resets every day and it just makes me anxious. I'd easily pay 50-100$/m instead of 10/m I already pay if I could get unlimited access but there's just no option for that.
If anyone has any recommendations for something like Khanmigo with unlimited access please please let me know. I'd pay so much for a good personal private tutor in my pocket. For maths if that helps.
