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.