Struggling to Use Free Version After Upgrading to Freemium and Deleting Prompts

I have a problem...
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I lost the functionality of the free version
I upgraded to the freemium version
I surrendered my data
I deleted all of my old prompts
But still I can’t add my prompt.

I have autism/a little bit of OCD, and whilst I understand you do not find the 1% of users who create prompts significant, I can say that for me personally, this change has been infuriating.

I tried other services, but they don’t get rid of the text which they paste, a minor change to most but a hurdle I find it difficult to adjust to as a result of me being a weirdo.

I do feel hurt that I am the target of your pricing model but I do understand your need to monetize the platform, I only wish you saw the 1% of users who contribute prompts as being the product as opposed to the market.

Please help me utilize the 1 free private post, as Its not allowing me to save changes whatsoever, no error message or anything - simply nothing.

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Did you just remotely sign me out by chance?

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There does seem to be a fault here. What I can’t say (I’m not an employee of AIPRM, and don’t have access to the code) is whether the fault in in the software itself, possibly a bug introduced when the ability for cloning was added, or whether it is a fault in the instructions and expectations, but there’s enough people reporting an issue (lots more in Can't save/have my own prompt ) that I feel pretty sure there is a fault.

I have flagged this for staff attention by @aiprm-christophc , @aiprm-tiborb , @aiprm-mariang or @aiprm-mikek so please be patient while they catch up and investigate things.

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Thanks for your help.

I had much harsher views on the monetization efforts before I tried alternative extensions. I would say the likely cost of having an extension that actually does things is that it might break.

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The work that the AIPRM team puts in is impressive. They have always very swiftly updated whenever the interface of OpenAI (or the API code to communicate with it) has changed or adapted, which has happened several times. Unfortunately, it’s not like OpenAI give us any advance warning of changes, so the AIPRM devs get just as surprised as the rest of us, and no matter what the schedule was meant to be, have to drop everything to fix it.

On top of that, there’s all the issues any software has just weeks after launch of a major release (the freemium version) and all the extra features that brought in. Plus OpenAI’s issues with security, their servers going down, the release of GPT4… Let’s just say I’m pretty glad that I am not an employee and only here to chat in the forums. :smiley:

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Whilst I disagree with their monetization strategy, I’ll agree that this is extremely quality work - which I ignorantly wouldn’t have done 3 weeks ago.

I’d love to see OpenAI buy these guys out to cater to the middle 1% of users who want advanced capabilities but don’t want to stretch for the API.

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I disagree with the price of a Pizza these days, but ultimately I just choose if I want it at that price or I don’t. I know I’m getting old by how many things seems ridiculously overpriced. :rofl:
But I almost never think that about stuff that isn’t a product but a tool - the value of a tool is always dependent on the user.

Example: for you or I the value of a paintbrush isn’t that high in all probability. But to a master painter, who can use that paintbrush to create works that they get paid tens or hundreds of thousand for? They are never going to moan about $5-$10 here or there.

$50 equates to less than 20 minutes of my (paid) time. So paying $50 once a month to save 20 minutes each day would be hugely profitable for me. Just like the master painters, the value varies according to what we get back.

Amazon Prime doesn’t make me one single cent, yet I happily pay it because when I do need something delivered, that next day delivery is incredibly reassuring. So sometimes it isn’t even about the money you make back, the investment of buying $200 at $20 each time.

If the business gets their model wrong, they leave money on the table. Right now, AIPRM are making more than I expected them to so quickly, so I’d say they got it pretty right. However, what they make still has to pay for all the costs of the free version too, because code doesn’t write and update itself. But them investing into the free version is what gives them the >800,000 user reach that prompt writers want. There’s a lot of levels of thought and strategy that go into pricing, and the AIPRM team lean heavily on years of experience from other SAAS tools they’ve produced.

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While I understand your points about pizza prices and tool savings, the situation here is different. It’s more like once enjoying a public park for free, but then a fence is put up and an entrance fee is introduced. The frustration comes not just from the fee itself, but from the fact that we once had access to it without any cost - and It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about an underserved public park or if we’re talking about Disneyland.

Entitlement is human nature - nobody is immune, regardless of who may say otherwise.

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I’ll agree with you if we add one caveat - the tendency toward entitlement is simply human nature - but just as human is the ability to resist our tendencies.

What is a park without ongoing maintenance? It is wasteland that quickly becomes either overgrown and unusable, or overused and barren. Remember how we were talking about the ongoing need for fast updates? Well, every single function adds to what needs maintaining, and thus to the ongoing costs of that maintenance. There is always a cost to that ‘free park’, where really it isn’t free at all, you are paying for it in your taxes. And if it turns out that the flower bed they have traditionally filled with roses needs ongoing replanting, more expensive fertilizers, or generally is more expensive to maintain than other options, well, sometimes the authority that maintains the park may decide to remove that flower bed, or to replant with cheaper or lower-maintenance plants, instead of raising the taxes or cutting other services…

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Ha! You’ve got me there!

I don’t want to be mistaken - I see big things for AIPRM, my journey for alternatives demonstrated a complete lack of even a fraction of the ambition held here.

My message comes more as a marketer, it was the tone of the change was problematic.

The team actively engages on the forums - which is fantastic! So why then was the change so cold, and corporate (not to mention the language of the terms and site pages seeming extremely insincere and somewhat sly in parts).

The outrage was expected, as they’ve admitted, not having a plan to deal with that other than arguing “You’re an insignificant portion of the userbase” or “AI is expensive and we need a return on our investments” was a mis-step imo.

-And arguing is exactly what it was, but who can blame them!

If I had dedicated countless hours creating an innovative tool, only to find myself facing dozens of alternative but zero competitors, and I offered just 1% of those users the choice to continue using the product partially for free or pay a nominal fee for access to full capabilities and more, but had them all spit back at me saying “it’s not worth it!”, I would be absolutely livid and upset.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I woke up that day no longer able to use a tool that I had become so accustom to, without warning, I know nothing of the time it took to make or the leagues it has over the competition - all I know is that I’m suddenly locked behind a paywall and theres an update post specifically crafted to try and downplay the fact that that sucks.

If the update post and day 1 conversations would have the same tone as you know, or as any of the administrators have had recently, then it would’ve been a different story.

If there would’ve been a clear warning put up on the main screen a few days before, and a message more along the lines of “Thank you for helping see our project through its trial, but as we progress we have to make a monetization efforts to sustain the project, therefore in our new version, although you’ll keep your old prompts and get 1 prompt slot, everything further, as well as all these new features will be premium” Then there would’ve been far less outrage, I think.

I feel like the conversations ended up as “This project took time and is good, you should want to pay for it” vs “This app was free, you’re greedy for wanting me to pay now”, Not productive or accurate representations of how either group felt, its just how both sides were obviously going to react under the circumstance.

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