Freemium Experience: More Features for All with Usage Limits

Announcements
338

Same here @NMaverick

I’ve been a free user pretty much since the start. I’ve recently started earning a liveable amount and was going to setup a VIP subscription on pay day (31st) - you can choose whether to believe me or not. I didn’t care about extra features, but wanted to support (and thank) a company I value.

However, this agressive and unprompted middle finger underlined by tone-deaf follow-ups has been telling and repelling. I do thank you for years of great service and feel guilty that I’ve not been able to contribute back, but I cannot and will not support, nor enable this behaviour.

I’m not going to join in with trying to convince you otherwise - the fine details aren’t worth debating - you’ve made yourselves clear and I hear you. I’m exporting my data, deleting my account, and you won’t see me again.

It’s laughable - I’ve been a loyal user for over a decade, with genuine admiration for your brand, yet this has driven me to seek an alternative and I’m already happily paying them!

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339

I use the Cinetrak app to access and manage my Trakt data. There’s personal profile with a quick overview of how many titles you watched, rated and collected. I’ve always had all these 3 numbers as equals, even if the purpose of “collected” may be something else.

Recently I started receiving “network errors” — a generic error message — every time I tried to collect a new title. And now those 3 numbers are out of sync.

You can’t possibly fathom the bad side effect this has over anxious people or those with some OCD level!!

As much as I wanted to, for a number of reasons I cannot control, I can’t subscribe to a VIP account, but I believe denying such small feature is really not the best course of action.

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340

Wait hang on was all this information sent to all Trakt users via email? I don’t think I received one. I just want to make sure @justin because you said that you will be better regarding communication and I want to hold you to it.

How did you all find out about this?

There are still people blindsided by the price increase btw.

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no one ever got any emails about the change. it was all rolled out as a surprise to everyone on the forum here on this exact thread. Price increase was never communicated publically and had to be found by word of mouth or get hit by surprise by the increase.

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As I feared. Disappointing to hear.

Justin’s comment saying they’d do better regarding communication:

A forum post isn’t bad as a start and any announcement will be a surprise, but you can’t just leave it like this. Send the email! I’d wager there will be more free users not on the forum being surprised by this change than the price increase.

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343

The bright side of not communicating this to everyone is that there’s room to make adjustments. You can say this was posted on the forum first but after receiving feedback you made adjustments and these are the final changes. For this and hopefully the price increase.

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344

I definitely never received any notification (email or otherwise) about this or I would have likely signed up for VIP at US$30 before the price doubled.

I also check my spam box daily, so there’s no way I missed an email.

The whole way this was handled has been an absolute debacle.

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345

Would you care to elaborate on the replacement that you found? Does it integrate with Kodi? I’m also looking for a replacement. I have brought my Trakt collection under 100 and it still will not allow me to add a new TV series to my list.

346

what alternative did you go to?

347

Did you also bring down your watchlist to under 100? Collection is different from watchlist.

348

I was hesitant to name it because I didn’t know the policy on listing specific competitors, but a look through posts in the last couple days shows a bunch of people naming it and others, so: Simkl. I chose it after also trying Serializd, JustWatch, TV Time, and Next Episode.

  • The interface isn’t the most intuitive and is cluttered compared to Trakt, but once I used it a bit and understood what everything was, I really liked it. I don’t mind dense interfaces as long as they present the information and functions I need efficiently.
  • Despite the density, interactions and load times are significantly faster than Trakt.
  • It only supports marking shows/movies as watched. There is no separate collection functionality. This is my biggest complaint, but I don’t really care about watch history, so I’m just marking episodes as watched to indicate I’ve collected them.
  • There is a Kodi add-on that apparently automatically marks media as watched. I don’t use it because I’m not using the service as intended.
  • There’s basic logic built in to organize shows correctly in default categories when all the released episodes have been watched (Watching if it’s continuing, Watched if it has ended). It sort of annoyed me at first because it was different (by default, Trakt doesn’t differentiate between those in collections), but then I realized it was nice to have a specific list of shows I’m following that are still releasing episodes.
  • It has a Dropped category to record shows you’ve watched (to some extent) and then stopped. I weirdly enjoyed going through my watch history to populate this.
  • The only reason I use a service like Trakt or Simkl is to notify me of newly-released episodes so I can collect them. On the standard Simkl dashboard, it has a list of all the released-but-unwatched (for me, uncollected) episodes of shows I’m following as well as an upcoming release list for all those shows. No need to set up a filtered view like in Trakt.

There doesn’t seem to be any movement on introducing a middle tier here, and I’m frankly liking Simkl more and more, so I’ll probably be paying the $35/yr for their middle tier in the next few weeks to support them even though the free tier does everything I need. If that’s a barrier, but you still want to support the service, you can also allow ads on their site. Bonus: if you visit 20 days in a calendar month, you’ll get the middle tier (Pro) for free.

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349

Just to add to the general feeling in this thread in case Trakt management are monitoring and/or open to reviewing the current direction.

I am a long time Trakt (free tier) user, with an extensive collection and watched history, using API integrations with a number of external packages and well over the current free tier collection limits.

I understand it is a business at the end of the day and I probably should have been paying something before now, but free was working quite nicely for what I needed so never did anything about it (my bad).

The only reason I found out about the changes was API calls failing to add items, then errors on the website when trying to update collections manually, this eventually led me to check the forums to discover the Sept price increase and the new free tier limits.

I could see paying $30/yr (with auto renewal) for the services provided that I actually use, so a little disappointed there was no real notification of the price increase/impending restrictions to give an opportunity to move to VIP before the cost/limit changes.

Would I sign up now if it was offered at $30/yr, probably, though I’d be a little wary of a large hike in the future, but I could live with it for now and review should things change.

At $60/yr I’m out, though it will be a pain to move to other services (some of which also charge) and more of a pain to change my “workflow”. I just can’t justify $60/yr for the limited functions of Trakt I make use of (I’m really not interested in much outside of having a large collection and tracking what I have watched).

From what I understand existing VIPs with auto renewal are effectively locked into the cheaper rates (for now at least). So I guess there is little financial risk to Trakt of large numbers of existing VIP users jumping ship. Any non-VIP users are then stuck jumping ship or stumping up $60/yr regardless of what functionality they may or may not use. The only existing paying customers they might lose are likely those not on auto renewal and now faced with a price hike.

A limited time offer for existing users (free and non-auto renewal) to sign up and lock in at the previous $30/yr (with auto renewal), before majorly restricting free tier functionality would have been the community friendly approach and still likely result in increased recurring revenue. Adding different tiers of membership and associated functionality/limits could also be an option. I guess it all comes down to which approach will generate the highest and most stable revenue, and these are metrics I just don’t have access to.

I’d think getting a new user signed up and then converting to a recurring subscription at $60/yr will be quite challenging, given other services available. Especially when long term users with large collections, imbedded workflows and significant time invested curating their data are potentially walking away. But again, I don’t have the metrics to determine what subscription price the market will bear and/or the cut-off point where revenue starts to fall rather than climb.

I will begin my transition elsewhere, hopeful that something suitable may come to pass with Trakt, but mindful that I need to be making alternative arrangements in case nothing changes.

Thanks for all the years of service, some rocky, most great.

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350

Totally agree with the above. Love Trakt, have been a user for years, probably should have signed up to VIP previously.

At 30 a year, I would be happy to support Trakt. At 60 a year it is worth my while moving elsewhere…

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351

I’m thoroughly enjoying marathon, but the lack of support for movies is a pity.

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A brief consideration. If these are really the actual numbers, you might think that they are very few … but those are probably the most important, loyal, long-standing users and who perhaps contribute the most to the whole community. This is Trakt’s way of thanking these users. Basically forcing them to leave.

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353

It’s crazy to me that people are advocating for ads. Ads are one of the worst things in existence (zero hyperbole): not only websites but whole cities are plastered with things that are meant to influence what you think and what you buy. The less companies collecting and selling our data the better.

As for the limits: I use Trakt pretty much solely to track what I watch and I don’t keep a watchlist, and I have a total of 3 lists: 1 has 50 items, 1 has 24 items, and 1 has 12 items.

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@justin
This service is there to track what you have watched and what you want to watch in your life. If you want to cut the basic product like this, you will no longer exist in 10 years. With this sentence no word of mouth will work: “Hey try Trakt, it only costs 60€ p.a. over 100 entries”

If you would offer 3 options it would work:

  1. free and keep data private, up to 100
  2. ad supported, up to 1000
  3. VIP …

Freemium now is crap.

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355

Two issues seem to be the theme here. As a long time Trakt VIP I want to add my opinion.

1 - 100 items is not enough

I often show Trakt to friends and family when they see me launch the app on the TV or complain about too many streaming services. For these cases I think the 100 is just fine. They get into the service, eventually hit a wall and have to decide to manage the limit or pay.

What happened here is that Trakt massively moved the limit and immediately hit a bunch of users that have felt cheated. Many comments say there should have been a grandfather clause and I agree.

2 - $60 is too much

I agree here as well, but I would probably still pay it, because I highly value this site and its service. But I can afford to pay it. As many have commented, there needs to be a mid point option.

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356

2 lists of 100 items each really is crazy.

Wait hang on. Free users, does this limit mean that you can’t copy a an existing list of over 100 items to your own account? Or is the limit for a list that you created and are adding to it?

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And some of these people want to be sold. They want to be the product. Make it make sense!