Update 2: free Prime promo and upgrade paths

#1

Note: decided to create a new topic for purposes of clarity.

Hello all.

That was definitely not the way we planned on the free promo and new Prime pricing plan. I explained on my original post the cause of the original customer confusion. The 1st email (Subject: Season’s greetings + a surprise for you) going to spam and the 2nd email (Subject: Follow up to new Prime pricing and free promo) going to inbox added to much of the confusion as the narrative wasn’t fully understood. To get a better understanding, I suggest reading the 1st + 2nd emails, the original post and then this.

Let me be clear about one thing at the outset: you DO NOT NEED to pay for Insync again. Prime is a new plan and EVERYONE has been grandfathered to their existing plans (Plus, Pro, Business) so you are not required to upgrade:

  • Plus customers: you can continue to keep using Insync 1.x - OR - upgrade to Prime and receive all future updates (2.x, 3.x, etc.)
  • Pro/Business customers: you can continue to stay on your plans and pay yearly - OR - upgrade to Prime at 30% off and pay one-time (either plan will give you all future updates)

To find what license you have, go here.

We will provide an upgrade page to Prime for all existing non-Prime customers (will send another email announcement when available) later this month:

  • If you have an @gmail account, you can upgrade to Prime (from Plus, Pro or Business) for free for a limited time (we may change this and make it free forever)
  • If you have a @gapp/3rd party account, you can upgrade to Prime (from Plus, Pro or Business) for 30% off

Again, you DO NOT have to upgrade. This is optional and Insync will continue working as is.

For those that do want to upgrade to Prime:
*For Plus, what you get different is “free version upgrades”
*For Pro and Business, a chance to migrate to a one-time payment model vs yearly that still covers “free version upgrades” and volume discounts

The reasons we released Prime and deprecated Plus, Pro and Business are:

  1. Simplify: we have a simple product but complicated pricing plans
  2. Future: looking ahead, the simplification makes life easier for future models

Frankly, it pains us to read some of the comments about price gouging and mistrust since we revolve product-related discussions around our customer. Without you, Insync as a business would not be possible. Why would we screw with that?

I can only apologize for the way we have communicated both the promo (holiday present) and the new pricing and can only promise to try to do better next time. But I am certain of one thing: we don’t want to screw up our customer relationships! And hopefully this post brings clarity to our original intention and spirit.

If it doesn’t and you need more clarity, post your question.

Happy new year!

P. S. – For existing paid customers only as of December 20, 2016: those that missed out on the free Prime promo (due to spam), we have decided to extend it and will be available under a new “extended free” page when ready. It will be announced in either a separate email or alongside the availability of the upgrade page.

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Update: free Prime promo and upgrade paths
Update: free Prime promo and upgrade paths
New simplified pricing!
FAQ on Prime plan
#2
#3

Hi terpua,

Ok, so basically two options for current Pro/Plus/Biz customers:

OPTION 1: Don’t Upgrade

  • Product will continue working as is
  • No future updates

OPTION 2: Upgrade to Prime

  • Has future updates
  • Other benefits

For those who choose to not upgrade, will we still get patches in case of any future bugs? I’m sure some bugs will appear once new OS X versions are out.

I think I’m speaking for everyone when I say that I just want to know what’s going to happen if I don’t upgrade / don’t do anything.

Kenn

#4

Updates are available for Pro and Business users. Nothing will happen to your account in this case, it will just remain on the yearly subscription it is on.

Updates are not available for Plus users. Nothing will also happen to your account but only maintenance updates will be available in the future for 1.x (no more new features, etc. when 2.x and above comes out).

#5

Hi CEO of Insync,

Thanks, that’s much clearer now. I don’t see why not upgrading, honestly it seems a win for current Plus users such as myself.

Happy new year to you too.

PS: Two antiviruses - Vipre and Bitdefender - don’t seem to appreciate your link on the latest email, they claim it’s dangerous. Just so you know.

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#6

Thanks for clarification !

Why not automatically push all “plus” users to “prime”, make upgrade process easier for everyone and show how you take care of all your subscribers ?

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#7

Thanks for your efforts to clarify this situation. I did actually read the first email in my spam folders, but was confused by it and forgot about it.

At the moment, I think I have three Pro accounts (for my Mum, my Dad, and I) and a Business account (with five slots for my employees).

I think it makes sense for me to upgrade the Pro accounts to Prime, as they are single user accounts with static email addresses.

I am not sure about the Business account. We change employees from time to time, as any business does, so if I upgrade this account to Prime, am I paying for five specific email addresses to be upgraded to Prime (some of which might be wasted when we change staff and delete their old G-Suite accounts), or just paying for five slots which can be reassigned to new people (as is currently the case with the Business account)?

Also, how come the GBP price is the same as USD and EUR? Presumably I can just pay in the cheapest of the three for me? :slight_smile:

Thanks,

Tom

#8

Why do you differentiate between @gmail users and GApps users? I’m currently on Pro and I use a GApps ID as my personal email. If I had used a gmail ID I could’ve upgraded to Prime for free, but now I need to pay for it. I don’t mind paying for the product, but I’m wondering why only GApps users need to pay.

#9

Yeah, that’s also a thing.

My Pro accounts are G-Suite accounts, but for personal use.

I guess it is a way to try and differentiate personal and business use without assessing customers on an individual basis?

#10

This is weird indeed.

I for example have just purchased a Plus account for my university’s GApps email, and I have to pay to upgrade?

At least educational institutions’ GApps should be able to upgrade for free - the $25 price tag was already a bit steep for a poor PhD student. :slight_smile:

#11

hi @terpua
thanks for the extra clarification (for me however, it was already clear after your 1st try ;)). I would however suggest to make the forum link Janine has sent out today, redirect to this post instead of the old one to avoid confusion.

as a plus user, thanks for the free upgrade, it is really a gift since this was not part of the deal. I would probably happily pay again since i am quite a satisfied insync user on linux. I :blue_heart: insync!

happy new year :beers:

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#12

I once stopped using insync for over 6 months when I was travelling and only using a mobile.

When I came back home and started using my linux laptop again, insync updated itself and continued working flawlessly as it did before.

What if I had happened to have done this again, or someone else? Except this time around, insync will not be working properly since I would have missed the “free upgrade” window.

I don’t understand why you are “grandfathering” accounts that are “eligible” for free upgrade, when you can simply upgrade these accounts automatically.

My GApps account that is on a Plus plan (one-time payment, not subscription) is not eligible for a free upgrade. I don’t see a reason why it shouldn’t be, a 30% discount means it is still more expensive than initial purchase, which at the time it was promised I would receive all program updates.

I definately won’t be adding a 2nd GApps account to insync, that’s for sure.

There are alternative cloud syncing services that have been created since insync’s beginnings that work with multiple OS, multiple services, multiple accounts at the same time for one price. It would be stupid to continue giving insync money for the same thing, for each individual account too.

I don’t even have that many accounts. Can’t begin to imagine how frustrating this is for people with a multitude of them.

Essentially the best fix from here is honor your one time payment model customers with free automated upgrades so they don’t even have to think about this fiasco, regardless of the account being @gmail or @gapps.

You’ve essentially decided to move your subscription plan customers to a one time payment (people who would pay anyway), and thought what the heck, I’ll sting a few one-time payers again with some tricks (people in these forums).

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#13

My thoughts, exactly

#14

Basically if you missed the email time-window, because of spam, or simply because you are on holiday, you don’t get the upgrade? this doesn’t make sense…

i have 3 accounts since 2014 for PLUS, for a life-time subscription, which supposed automatic updates, so it would only make sense to automatic upgrade from you, this way you take care of your existing customers…

if this is not happening, i will definitely not be adding new accounts…

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#15

Because they want MORE MONEY from their loyal customer.

IF YOU PAID ONCE, YOU ARE LIKELY TO PAY TWICE.

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#16

Didn’t get the promo mail, not even in spam folder

#17

I think you are still handling this very poorly. Your communications are most unclear. I suggest you create email templates for each customer profile (Pro/Plus/Whatever) and email each of your customers with their options clearly laid out, not cluttered up with some of your other product licences that we may know nothing about. You should also honour the free offer, whatever it was supposed to be, and not penalise your customers because you failed to correctly spam-check your own promo emails before sending.

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#18

Sooo. I have looked at the posted info and have noted that there is no mention of “Insync Plus!” users at all. what is our upgrade path?

#19

Yeah, I just spent $25 on a plus account a couple of weeks ago. Will I now need to spend +$30 for both drive accounts I’m using? None of this makes any sense.

The first rule of customer service is to make sure the customers are actually happy. That does not seem to be going on effectively here.

The other day I had the chance to recommend inSync to a friend but chose to recommend oDrive (which is more expensive) even though it was a bit overkill for him. I did so just because of all of this mess. Often principle will eclipse value, I’d personally pay more to a company which treats me right when things get wonky, than less to a company that does not. What is the value of “Word of Mouth” to the inSync folks?

This could have been a great opportunity to spread the app through a satisfied customer base who would be happy to recommend it to others…

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#20

Like I said on Twitter I uninstalled the app and deleted the Repositories, I don’t trust Insync as a business after this PR fiasco, specially when it had direct access to my machine.
I won’t have a “old” app running on a updated distro, that’s plain stupidity.
I paid and the app worked great, now you guys/gals need more money to keep working and I understand it.
I’m sure you’ll ask money again when you arrive at a 4.0; 6.0. I already pay a subscription for Google Drive and I don’t need another for the app, specially when it’s google that hosts the files.
Again best regards and all the best for the future.

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