Today, we are moving forward with the difficult decision to discontinue many of our limited Legacy pricing plans.
This means that as of April 11, 2017, we are discontinuing all pricing plans that were offered prior to July 21, 2015. For these customers, you will have until April 11, 2017 to either 1) select a new plan, 2) allow our billing system to upgrade you automatically, or 3) cancel your account. But, before we get too far, let me face the elephant in the room….
Pricing Changes Suck.
I get it. I sincerely do. These aren’t fun for anyone. But, they are a necessary part of business and the lifecycle of a startup. So today, I want to outline some of the reasons why we have decided to do this and what steps we will be taking to make things as seamless as possible.
Please note: This post isn’t intended to be a bunch of PR spin. This is just going to be a transparent ramble outlining the many reasons why we are doing what we are doing, and how we are going to try to make the transition as easy as possible for everyone along the way.
First, let me say that we are going to do everything we can to help legacy customers move to a new plan. When you upgrade from a legacy plan to ANY of our current pricing plans,
you will automatically save 30% on your new plan for the first six months. No questions asked.
Of course, our
review program fully applies as well and can definitively save you a few bucks during the transition.
Yeah, But Why Now?
It has been more than 2 years since CoSchedule released its first set of tiered pricing plans. At that time, we assured our customers they would be grandfathered in at their current pricing plan for at least 1 year. We’ve proudly fulfilled that commitment and have been happy to even extend that offer to include a full 2 years in most cases.
During this time, as we've added new features, we have done everything we can to make sure our Legacy accounts stay fully operational. No question: This been an absolute worthwhile investment for a group of extremely loyal customers. However, as we add functionality to CoSchedule's code base, it makes future changes increasingly difficult, slow, and sometimes even impossible. Today, we find ourselves at that very crossroad. In the next few months, we'll be making imperative changes to our tool that will make maintaining these Legacy plans impossible.
While this forces us to make a difficult decision, ultimately, we believe this makes CoSchedule better for everyone. Here’s why.
These Changes Will Benefit Everyone
- It will help you be more productive. Many of the most popular features we've ever released are not available in legacy pricing plans. In fact, our new pricing plans offer more than 20 time-saving features, including Pinterest, Instagram, social video scheduling, best time scheduling, ReQueue social automation, and social messages analytics. We guarantee there is something helpful for everyone, at every plan level.
- It will boost performance throughout the application. It takes a lot of extra code and processing power to maintain additional pricing plans. This change will literally allow us to remove 1,000s of lines of code resulting in a lighter and faster-performing tool.
- It will shorten development timelines on new features. Reducing complexity within our tool will allow us to build and test new features at a much faster rate. This means you will get new features faster (and with fewer bugs).
- It will improve support response times and accuracy. Removing old features and pricing plans will make our tool simply easier to support. This will result in shorter response times for customer inquiries and more accurate solutions right out of the gate.
- It will make way for more pricing flexibility in the future. Many of our customers have asked us to make our pricing plans more flexible. For example, in the future, we hope to allow our customers to more easily add (or remove) team members, social profiles, or even certain features based on need. This will require a retooling of our billing system which can only be accomplished with fewer plans in the mix.
- It will increase our focus on product improvement. We have a ton of great feature ideas from users like you. And let’s face it, you'd rather have us build the next ReQueue or Marketing Projects feature than doing boring maintenance projects. This will help us build the tool you want to be using.
And Now Let’s Cut To The Chase...
Candidly, we suspect that for some of you, now will be a time to evaluate whether or not CoSchedule is still the best fit. We wholeheartedly believe it can be, and with the 20+ game-changing features we've added, we're certain the value is absolutely there. Many of our legacy pricing customers have already moved over to the
new pricing plans and are enjoying the benefits of those features. With that said, you have to make a decision that's best for your business. Here are some things we hope you'll consider in order to make the most informed decision (
either way, we've got your back):
- Get to know the new features to see how they'd elevate your marketing game. We've made some serious upgrades the past 2 years. To help illustrate these game-changing features (immediately available to you), as well as provide an opportunity to ask any questions you might have about the transition, we’ll be hosting a webinar every week through April 11. Register for one of them now.
- What are your 2017 goals for growth? As we transition from scrappy startup to the premium marketing content calendar, we're hoping you’re eager to grow with us. What are you looking to accomplish this year and what tools will you need to get you there? Consider how you use CoSchedule today and what functionality gets you 10x growth.
- If not CoSchedule, what other tool would you use? Trust us, we don't want you looking anywhere else. Bottom line, if you’re producing content and social media, nothing keeps you more organized and moving projects forward than our drag-and-drop marketing calendar. Nothing. However, if you've decided that you're solely looking for a platform with just basic social sharing functionality, we wouldn't hesitate in recommending an alternative app like Hootsuite or Buffer.
Whew, That Was A Lot To Digest. Here Are Your Next Steps.
- Get educated. Join our "My New CoSchedule Plan" webinars to check out these features and get any questions answered.
- Ready to upgrade? Awesome. Go to the legacy upgrade page to choose a plan best for you.
- I need time to decide. No problem. You have until April 11 to make your decision. Please note: At that time, we’ll automatically upgrade you to the closest matching new pricing plan.
- I'm going to try a different tool. We're sorry to see you leave. If you wish to cancel, you can do so by going to Settings > Billing and clicking on the "Cancel My Subscription" link on the bottom of the page within your CoSchedule app.
- Immediate questions? We’re happy to help you with your decision and field any transition inquiries you might have. Contact us within the app or email us at support@coschedule.com.
Of course, the biggest reason of all to upgrade is that it will enable us to continue building a product you love. We are currently making a ton of investments in growing our team and building out the features that make you a more productive marketer. We love what we do. We love the people we get to do it for.
