One of the hardest things to do when building a business, even a side business, is to figure out how much to charge for a product. Yak Tack has been around since 2018, and I’ve made only a handful of pricing updates in the six years since. For the longest stretch, Unlimited Yak Tack was $5/year. Free Yak Tack was, well, free for five concurrent words.
$5/year is really cheap.
And that price was always less than it cost us to run Yak Tack. Costs comprise:
Hosting: we use Heroku.
Email delivery: we use SES.
OpenAI: we ditched dictionaries and are now entirely LLM-based.
Cool. “Let’s charge more to cover our costs” says the MBA in the room. But what’s fair? A fair price is commensurate with the value customers get from us. Does Yak Tack create even $5 of value per year? Can’t people just look up words for free anyway?
Well, the value we provide is in helping people remember what words mean, which goes beyond just looking them up in a dictionary. We’ve got an algorithm for remembering. There’s also a human element to Yak Tack. Notice anyone remembering interesting words? Follow them to discovery new words. You can follow me, if you like. McG and Kerry are also great options. Check out any word on Yak Tack and you’re bound to see a cadre of people who’ve tacked it, and who you can follow:
The new price?
We think Yak Tack is worth $2/month. That covers our costs and is, I think, closer to the value people get from it. We’ve also scaled back the Free plan. It’s no longer Free for Five, but Free for One, meaning free users can remember one word at a time instead of five. We think that’s enough to make Yak Tack useful for parsimonious folks while creating a clear advantage to people who go Unlimited.
What about existing Unlimited people?
They get to stay on the old $5/year plan. I’m grateful for all those early adopters and think grandfathering you all into that old price is merited. Thank you.
Changes went into effect about an hour ago. As always, shoot me an email, jeremy@yaktack.com, if you questions, concerns, trials, tribulations, or ideas. I’m always down to jam.