New Pricing Causing Grief!

Discussions
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#21

Here’s the text from the email Snipcart sent on December 6th:

Thank you for being a valued Snipcart customer. We are writing to you about an upcoming change to your subscription.

Starting January 1, 2024, the minimum monthly fee will increase from $10 to $20 USD. Customers with a Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) exceeding $1,000 per month will not experience any change in their billing.

Since our inception, Snipcart has been committed to offering you a robust e-commerce solution and empowering your business with the best tools and support possible. We’ve done this while maintaining the same pricing since 2018.

A response to rising costs, this new pricing will allow us to continue providing you with a high-quality product and support.

No further action is required. You may manage your subscription anytime by visiting your account.

Could the notification have come earlier? Sure. But their reasoning is sound, and in our current economy with high inflation, a $10 increase after maintaining the same pricing for 6 years isn’t crazy by any means.

The standard fee is 2%, so if you were selling nearly $1k per month, it really didn’t increase much at all. If you’re selling $500 or less, then yes, it’s an extra $10. But if this is an ongoing thing, maybe you jumped into a shopping cart solution too early? Snipcart has to pay for this forum, for support, for CDN, for servers, etc., regardless of whether you’re selling anything or not. That’s what the $20 covers.

#22

billywight,

Your whole approach to this is, if you’re not selling enough yet, that’s your fault. But that’s not really the discussion here.

The point I’ve been making is that a lot of small businesses watch every expense. That individual $10/month increase may not seem like a lot, but small business put their entire budget together. To be efficient, yes, they reduce each of those “small” expenses. You could isolate a single expense and create a false idea that the business is all about that one $10/month charge, but that would be ignoring the facts I just shared.

Beyond that, my point is that SnipCart issued no warnings about this. As a developer, it put me in an awkward position as my clients complained about an increase, and I was made to look bad because I didn’t know about it.

I received no email on December 6th about this.

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#23

Thanks for sharing that @billywight

And yes, it isn’t crazy by any means. The problem is for new folk who came in thinking it would be this price, but then during their first (in my case) billing, it was double that.

maybe you jumped into a shopping cart solution too early?

To be fair, and by the price increase itself, it seems like it.

Snipcart has to pay for this forum, for support, for CDN, for servers, etc., regardless of whether you’re selling anything or not. That’s what the $20 covers.

Agree. Though the technical prices have not increased, at least for the cloud providers I have experience with. They have maintained their pricing, some services have even decreased their pricing. I agree that support will cost money as inflation and interests goes up this will likely take a bigger hit.

I’m just not sure if targetting the bottom line to keep the business afloat is good for business. It’s probably a risk they were willing to take if that were the case.

I’m not upset about the response, I just wished everyone affected, old and new could have been more informed about it as the changes came through.

For example, you’ve received the email on the 6th. I didn’t get anything. Even though I was a user since the August, 2023, and only because I wasn’t paying yet? In @MatthewSchenker case, would he need to have a paid monthly subscription even though he might not directly have been selling something via snipcart, to receive that important information from the vendor, to ensure he provides the appropriate communication to his clients?

It really breaks down at the lack of communications of these changes, in paritcular to non-paying, potential customers at the time. The price was just the surprise factor. When it comes to billing, no one likes surpises.

#24

I can’t speak to why you guys didn’t get the email. Maybe it’s in your spam folder or something? Maybe you weren’t on their email list for some reason? I’m sure they intended to notify you, not sure why it didn’t come through.

Snipcart communication and updates have been derailed by the Duda integration for the last year plus, which sucks. I wouldn’t be surprised if Duda has something to do with the price increase too. Regardless, I don’t see an extra $10 as inappropriate given the economic climate and the fact that prices haven’t changed in 6 years.

And more importantly, it’s a business decision that they made. You can complain all you want, but I don’t see that being a valuable use of your time. Maybe increase your pricing slightly to suit; your margins just went down slightly, so adjust accordingly.

This forum has always been a community forum, not an official Snipcart staffed help forum (it actually used to say that on the top, not sure what happened to that). I’d suggest sending them an email if you want an official Snipcart response.

#25

If one of my customers had an issue or concern about my service, I’d prefer to know about it rather than pretend everything is okay. It means I can make better business decisions later on, that will consider the concerns and impact it might have on my customers. My comments here aren’t intended to be “please change it back! it was good before!” or anything like that. I only hope to raise the concern of the gap in communication, and highlight the impact it has caused. If they see and address it, great. I don’t hold any expectations that they should or have to.

I’m only expressing what I would have wanted to see, had I been in their shoes, after executing those changes, just like you are expressing your thoughts and views in response to the reaction other users of snipcart are experiencing and sharing your perspective.

#26

I totally agree on not receiving notification of the price change. I’m sure that was a mistake on their end somewhere.

The pricing change to $20 a month, however, is 100% fine in my opinion and representative of the service they provide. If anything, this minor increase will help weed out the customers that aren’t providing much income and are taking up resources that could be provided to customers who do. That may sound harsh, but it’s not unreasonable.

#27

billywight,

I think it’s fine for a company to charge whatever they want. But it’s also fine for their customers to voice issues with the charges and/or the way the company handles it.

What “resources” are customers with low volume taking up? A user account? I’m pretty sure that even $10/month is still profitable for SnipCart to maintain low-volume accounts.

#28

Servere space, server usage, support requests, emails, etc.

You’re welcome to your opinion, just as I am. But at the end of the day, they decided that it was best to raise the price. I’m sure they did it based on what they thought was best for their business and have evaluated the risks of the change. If you think it would be a better business decision to charge only $10, I’d suggest you whip up your own Snipcart alternative and do just that!