Doodle and MyDoodle will remain free while the Doodle Premium will cost $28/year. Basically Doodle Premium allows the user to customize the look and feel of the site. It’s a way to personalize the events that Doodle users create and send to their participants. The price seems a bit on the high side as $9 or $14 feels about right but I am sure the Doodle team researched the right price. Pricing is always the hardest part of any business, whether web-based or brick-and-mortar.

The company also notes that Premium Doodle is ad-free and customers can also request personal information from their event participants, such as postal address, e-mail address, and phone number.

It’s interesting to watch the event planning category move to a crowdsourced model where polls are used to find a time and date that meets the needs of the group. The Doodle Facebook application allows you to poll your friends around an event topic. Facebook friends will receive a message inside of Facebook and Doodle will send emails to your friends who don’t have Facebook accounts.

Here’s an example of the poll page:

Check out our coverage of other event-planning services including MyPunchbowl, Renkoo, Center’d, Coordinatr and GoLark. Also check out our coverage of technology in Switzerland.