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SocialToo Begins Charging for Premium Upgrades
SocialToo founder Jesse Stay has posted on the company blog that beginning May 11, there will be a premium paid upgrade option available at a one-time fee of $20. SocialToo describes their service as, “…can help you be a social networking power user. Keep your follower lists in sync across networks, and get daily updates.” They can also send out surveys to your followers. SocialToo advisor Louis Gray has a good overview of the service.
Jesse notes regarding the new pricing option, “As of today you can now pay a 1-time $20 fee which, when it goes into effect Monday, May 11, will put you on a dedicated server (or servers as we get more people paying for the service) that will enable us to run your account much more frequently and also auto-follow and re-cache much more frequently for your account, meaning a much more accurate and reliable service for you.”
My only concern with the $20 one-time fee is that he has lost nearly all chance to get more revenue from his power users. I assume many of the SocialToo power users will pay the $20 which will provide a quick stream of cash. I’d rather see him set the upgrade as a yearly fee – this way in a year Jesse can bring in new features and grab another set of funds. At this point his only chance to gain more revenue from those newly-paying users would be to offer more services and hope that they will upgrade again.
Jesse also notes that most of the SocialToo offering will continue to be free for all users.
I never understood one time fee services, especially with companies such as Zuora on the market. Build a revenue stream, I completely agree Allen.
Thanks for sharing this Allen! In full transparency, we (myself and my advisors, Louis Gray and Guy Kawasaki) thought long and hard about the one-time option, and decided one-time was the best way to do this for the moment. We have had good experience thus far with the one-time $5 catch up fees we charge.
This isn’t to say we aren’t prepared though, should new users stop joining the service for any reason. We’re currently working on multiple services behind the scenes which will complement the other services we provide. When those are ready, assuming it makes sense, we still have plans for a monthly or yearly premium option. When that happens I’ll also consider including some of the one-time pay features for free under such a plan. In addition, we still have advertising opportunities in a few places if anyone is interested – in this economy I’m not banking on that though.
Regardless, we’ll still have a free service on top of it all and intend to keep it that way. Each level of service we offer will continue to grow and expand as our business grows. I’m really excited for what the future holds. I’m working on some really cool stuff right now!
Thanks again for the great post!
Jesse Stay
CEO, SocialToo.com
SocialToo’s scripts have too constant problems. I am a paying customer and when the script didn’t run, I wrote to Social Too’s e-mail, Twitter account and forum. I didn’t receive a reply from any. Two weeks later, Jesse writes with the e-mail about the service being $20. I respond to that and finally I get a response. The response is -> go check the forum ticket. The forum ticket read:
This request is currently being processed by our staff
Jesse Stay is assigned to your request. You will receive a notification by email when the request status is updated by our staff.
But no one contacted me.
Louis Gray and Guy Kawasaki must be silent advisors because neither bothered to answer even when the matter was made public. I contacted Kawasaki on Twitter and didn’t receive a response.
Marlene, you’re now going around to every blog posting the same stuff. I’ve told you both via e-mail and our Twitter account we’re sorry for the delay and I’d love to make it up to you. As I said in numerous places I need some clarification on what you’re expecting so we can make it up to you. Thus far all I’ve heard back is “you need to read”. I simply need clarification and I’d love to make you happy. My offer’s still good – I just need clarification from you on what it is you’re wanting from us.
Just to clarify on my end – you want it to finish unfollowing the surplus of people you’re following that aren’t following you back. Our free service doesn’t cover that, and I’m showing you didn’t purchase the catch up service that unfollows those you’ve manually followed. Is there a chance you did purchase that and we recorded it wrong? I need to know that and, as I’ve said via e-mail and elsewhere I’m happy to help you further.
I’ve now tried to contact you and help you for 3 days now. I’m still happy to help and I’ll continue to be happy to help. If you can clarify that I’ll be happy to resolve whatever service you’re trying to get from us.
Jesse – I am a blogger. I blog about what I like and what I don’t like. I blog about great service and poor service.
You offered no service. How was it that you used Twitter everday, but were able to ignore by polite request for help?
You run a business, I received terrible service and I am letting other consumers know not to use their money on a company which won’t even offer to help when the script isn’t working.