no one wants politics brought up in here
some idiot user has been going around flagging posts that they don’t agree with and we don’t now who it is. it’s not just you. the trakt mods will go back and undo the flagging in a bit.
You can get a pretty good idea of who it is if they’re newly flagging something like in this case, by visiting this URL: Trakt Forums
Anyway, as per the overwhelming sentiment. I loved trakt, was going to buy VIP because I was using the site daily. Even at $60 USD. Which is like $120 in my local currency. Still was going to buy it. But when I saw this post I knew management, or just you Justin, don’t have the right kind of mindset to care for your users anymore. Maybe you know what you need a lot better than all the users you’re driving away, and if so, that’s fine! It’s your company after all. We’re just the users that thought this was a site that respected us and were clearly wrong. I mean just the way you titled this post says a lot. “More features for all!” … all while burying the massive limitations you’re introducing near the end of the list. Sad. Beautiful site and an extremely easy to get used to UI, lots of effort clearly went into that. Just a shame you’re driving the users away so there’ll eventually be nobody but the diehard grandfathered in VIPs to enjoy it.
I think Trakt could save a good bit of face if they offered a limited time $30 VIP deal so that people could give it a try. It really is great.
For what it’s worth, the iOS and Android apps offer a free 1 month trial if anyone really wants to test it out.
You’re welcome to make a post on the forums or even message support if there was something not working and others are generally quick to help out before even us as team members can respond. There’s sometimes features people find that even I’m unsure of .
It could be a dev issue with Jellyfin (I’m honestly unfamiliar) if it’s erroring on some of the recent changes which then stops the history syncing? Perhaps worth contacting them if it’s an integration managed by them.
That’s a valid point but as the iOS/Android dev, I’m sure you’re very aware that anyone who then gets stuck paying an iOS/Android subscription will be paying a decent percentage MORE than it would cost by subscribing to Trakt directly. However, I understand where you’re coming from in mentioning that users can trial VIP for a month.
But does the Trakt team realise the real issue is that US$60 (~AU$100) annually is a ludicrous amount to charge, especially if you’re a barebones user who only wants some relatively high-count lists and scrobbling? Dude, you’re an Australian and you know how bad the exchange rate is against USD, and then you have to add service fees etc on top of that.
I simply don’t know how you guys can possibly justify wanting to charge everyone US$60 when a decent percentage of users - at least, according to the number of those posting in this thread - don’t want or need the majority of what VIP offers. You guys really need to have a good think about the situation.
thanks for the pointer! incredibly easy to use (you just put yr username in) and you can even cron a wget
job - nice.
I haven’t sifted through my export to check for accuracy yet (but I can only assume it works)
as as others have said, a $0.99/month Plus plan would have been fine with me. I have no issues investing $12/year - $60 is a whole other ballgame.
I love the service & sincerely hope the team sorts this out sooner than later!
Feel free to DM me the link to the JF forum and/or any other details, as I said I’m unfamiliar with Jellyfin but I can try help. I tried looking up some info on Jellyfin and as I understand it, it should only be syncing your history, of which these changes make no difference to. It says you can optionally (based on settings?) sync collection and ratings, where collection could be affected based on these changes, but if I understand correctly your “collection” is more your jellyfin library and you don’t really need Trakt’s collection feature? It’s probably worth creating a separate post in the forums (eg. Media Centers - Trakt Forums) to discuss further.
Oh it’s definitely great, and the on boarding process is easy and you’ll get emails of “things you could do” too. Definitely recommend.
I believe our Apple App/Google Play Store prices are identical to our website prices. Though we only offer monthly through the app so if you want the yearly discount then sure its “cheaper” in bulk there - if I’m not mistaken we pay comparable transaction fees regardless of whether you pay through Apple or PayPal, etc. eg. USD $6 on the web vs AUD $9.99 on the iOS app subscription (at the time of posting Google suggests USD $6 is AUD $9.67).
I get where you’re coming from regarding the cost but as it’s been pointed out at various points in the thread, as with any other company Trakt has costs to cover and I’m no business/revenue expert (I’m just a nerd who likes to make apps and watch way too much tv) but subscription costs are usually based on future potential and growth and ideally stay the same for many years - they didn’t change for 9 years until recently.
It’s also been discussed that we might be able to add regional prices for more countries in the future to help there.
I can’t speak directly for justification of our prices other than what’s already been discussed, but from a Trakt user point of view (I was a Trakt user since 2015, vip since 2017, working here since 2020) and general human with costs like other subscriptions or services I pay for (eg. 1Password, iCloud, Apple Music) I can share my thought process of how I usually personally handle prices of things - Disclaimer: Australian prices and standards - if I’m using it every day and it’s costing me $10 a month ($0.36 per day) its almost a no brainer. People can go spend $6 a day on coffee (ironically I don’t drink coffee but still…) or $15 on takeaway compared to what’s a lot less if they prepared something similar themselves. I do my best to save money where I can (cancel streaming service subscriptions and only subscribe when next needed) or use discounts or cashback deals where possible so I can pay for things that I consider important to myself. Obviously in the current day and age we’re getting more and more businesses adopt the subscription model and it sucks as consumers but we also don’t really have a choice but to cut what isn’t important anymore.
From what I can tell for your use case, and I’ll say again - I’m very unfamiliar with media centres such as Kodi or Jellyfin - but I’m curious if there’s a setting to ignore Trakt’s collection feature and just use history? Does your set up involve multiple accounts or only one?
I’ll prefix with I’m not saying everyone handles their Trakt data the same as me… but for list limits, again being a almost 10 year Trakt user, my watchlist is 118 items and I personally think that’s too many and I need to just cut ties with some of them that I know I’ll probably never get to. I have items from 2017 on there and new things come out every month - I know I’m unlikely to get to them. Free users still have the ability to put more immediate things on their watchlist and relegate some unlikely options to other lists, or export your data for later and do a clean up and refer to that data export later. Things won’t be removed until you remove them.
I actually found out about the price increase and limits when I went to finally get the $30/year VIP, simply to support the service, not for any benefits. But doubling the price and slashing freemium limits? I can understand doing one or the other, but both? That’s just sad.
Not in the UK, though. Website is $6 and Apple is £5.99. We’re not quite at parity yet, exchange rate stands at $1.24 to pound sterling. I know that @justin is trying for regional variations, but it must be difficult when you have to factor in Apple’s margin.
But @Ohifriend , the main reason I started using Trakt in the first place was because the ios app just blew me away. I used to subscribe to TVMaze at $60 a year, and they don’t even have an app or half the stuff that Trakt does generally.
I’m going to play ‘devils advocate’ here.
In the UK, we still have TV listing magazines, that you can either get on subscription or buy in store weekly. The cheapest is £0.85, roughly $1, so works out at around about $52 a year, and that is just for a paper magazine with TV listings for channels for the UK. Also contains articles which may or may not be worth reading, but some just pick up for the TV guide. And you couldn’t turn around and say “I don’t read the articles, so can I have the magazine for half price?”. So, that’s the cheapest - $52 a year.
The most expensive TV listings magazine is £3.80, roughly $4.75 a week. That amounts to almost $250 a year just to see what is on TV, only for the UK.
Compare that to Trakt and everything it does. Even just using it for tracking and a couple of lists is far more than you would have got out of those paper magazines.
And yes, up until a few years ago, I used to buy one (the cheapest one $1 week or $52 year.) When you compare to what Trakt can do for $8 more.
I know you could argue that the paper copy has to be printed/distributed etc., but even so, Trakt is worth a lot more to me than that, especially since I got my VIP membership and using it more to its full potential.
I also know that since the internet age, we have all gotten used to getting everything for free, but costs are going up everywhere, and everyone including those working fulltime on Trakt have to put food on the table.
Just my thoughts this morning, since I have been using my VIP membership that will likely cost me $60 next year…
Edit: I know I am looking at it from a ‘western’ point of view and not taking into account other countries eg India, where Trakt is more expensive than than other local stuff for you guys. My reasoning above is not aimed at you.
Used Trakt for years and now nothing works essentially. I was very close to signing up, but this kind of forced attempt at clutching at money from free users is very off putting. Could you at least think about bringing in a lifetime subscription? $60 a year is steep for users like me who essentially just want to keep track of things.
This is really poor from Trakt VIP itself isn’t worth $60 a year, maybe bring it back to $30p/y.
By limiting the free features will likely see many users leave and go elsewhere, i gave VIP a try for a month and it just isn’t worth the money.
This could begin the end of Trakt, listen to you users they are your customers.
Because there are competitors, which offer the same features for less or for free.
TV listing magazines are a relic of the past - would be surprised if they are around in a few years, much like yellow pages.
I like Trakt, and think that the pervious pricing was better and more compelling to upgrade. I think trying to force free users to upgrade in this way is counterproductive especially for $60 a year when other services are cheaper with the same feature sets. As many others have said I do think a cheaper tier for around $10-20 a year to remove said limitations as well as maybe dark mode would be a good idea.
Of course, but for example, I’m only using Trakt to list what I’ve watched.
I’m not using any calendar or additional features.
I’ve 2 lists : movies and series.
When I watch a movie, I rate it, mark it as watched, add it to my collection, and include it in my movie list.
When I finish a series (all seasons), I do the same for the complete season (not 1 ep by 1) but in my series list.
That’s it.
I’m using Kodi, but without any API for auto-checking or syncing, I do everything manually.
So, for that, it’s not worth paying $60 per year.
At least, like Simkl, I could consider a lifetime subscription for around $150 or something.
But clearly, paying yearly for what I’m doing makes no sense.
Now, I can’t even use the website anymore for the little I was doing, so…
Gimme something at 1$ or 2 per month or idk 20$ per year for only collection and list and i’m good with that, no need more
Just put an Half VIP ^^
Here’s the thing: there are 3 adults (me, my wife and our daughter) living in our household and we all use a single Trakt account for our Kodi addons because it’s really the only way to manage things. With a setup like this, it doesn’t take long before a Collection of TV shows easily exceeds 100 items when 3 people are using it and a Trakt Collection is - by far - the best solution.
I can imagine that 100 items on a list might be enough for 1 or 2 people but for 3, it simply doesn’t work. Many TV shows have a huge number of episodes to get through and it also doesn’t really make sense to continuously add and remove shows based on when they screen during the year (adding them) and when they’re on hiatus (removing them).
And here’s the thing: it seems to me that Trakt is being used in a lot of different ways by users and yet Trakt staff are now trying to force people into a one-size-fits-all pricing structure based on a perception of how they think people use Trakt. The reality is that some people will use a lot of the current VIP functions, some will use maybe half of these, and some (like me, and apparently many others who have posted in this thread) only want the bare minimum. It just doesn’t make sense to try and force users into a one-size-fits-all pricing structure when the product itself is being used in so many different ways. It really seems to me that Trakt staff have become so tunnel-visioned and enamoured with functions and dreams that a considerable number of customers don’t need or want….but Trakt needs these customers to pay for them, regardless. This is a crazy way to do business and I’m sure you’ve noticed that people don’t like being forced to pay exorbitant fees for a whole bunch of stuff they don’t want or need.