Pricing without the dark patterns

Most software pricing is designed to be slightly hard to read. Not dishonest, exactly — just arranged so that the comparison you want to make takes a bit more effort than you have, and the default option is the one that suits the seller.

We have written down what we will not do, so that you can hold us to it.

The rules

Cancelling takes the same number of clicks as subscribing. Same place in the interface, no retention offer in the way, no email address to write to, no phone call. If it ever takes longer, that is a bug and we will fix it.

No countdown timers. A price that expires in 14:59 is a price that will be back next week. We have all seen the same banner on the same site three months running.

Nothing is pre-ticked. Not the annual plan, not the newsletter, not the optional extra.

A discount means something was actually sold at the higher price. Otherwise it is not a discount, it is a price with a line through a number nobody paid.

Early adopters keep their rate. If you back something early and the price goes up later, you stay on the price you joined at for as long as you stay subscribed. This is in the Early Adopter Policy rather than left as a good intention.

What that costs us

It is worth being honest that these rules are not free.

Urgency works. Pre-ticked boxes work. A cancellation flow with three "are you sure?" screens genuinely does retain people who would otherwise have left. We know this because the whole industry has measured it, repeatedly, and that is precisely why those patterns are everywhere.

So the position is not that we found a clever way to be nice and make more money. We will make somewhat less money than we would with the other approach. We think a business that needs those tactics to survive is a business with a pricing problem it is hiding, and we would rather find that out early.

Where the prices actually are

On each product page, in full, before you are asked for anything. If you find a number on this site that is not where you expected it, or a term that only appears after you have entered a card, tell us — that is exactly the kind of thing we want to hear about, and we will treat it as a defect rather than a complaint.