I think they probably damaged themselves by going for a land grab of user base through freebies. It meant the users weren’t ever going to convert to paid customers, so it was more to show investors that they had a user base. But, with an increased base of users who weren’t paying, it then meant they needed to find either new revenue streams or cheaper ways to provide the service. Unfortunately, it seems they went with the new revenue streams whilst also decreasing the functions paying members were able to access (something I find quite abhorrent- I paid a service level, but then they change what I receive mid-subscription). And then computer - rammed down my throat. One reason I pay for pro is to stop the nagging noise of paid tiers. And instead, they actually created a way of logging in and continually seeing gated functions.
So, after paying them upwards of $400-$500 and being a loyal customer, I walked.
I am just about to end my free trial, it lasted 12 months for the educational version which does not have any credits for Computer, I just canceled it on the webpage and it says it is going to be canceled at the day my renewal would happen. I’m observing closely.
Perplexity promised me this plan would be 5 USD once it finishes, the interface say they will bill me for 20, supports tells me not to worry, but I’m afraid it’s just a bot. I trust my instincts.
Regardless of price, I decided to cancel. Assuming 5 USD was a real promise, that looked like a great deal on paper, but I had a hunch that something is not good once they locked me out for generating images after a couple of tries, but I’ve been able to do so in the past, so I compared it with the free tier of Gemini and had more luck with image generation on the latter. The webpage is also really slow on Safari after a couple of exchanges.
What killed my interest was that I compared the search results and deep research on a couple of queries with ChatGPT Go, and I found that the search results were worse on Perplexity, while the deep research reports looked better superficially but, on close inspection, collected older information from fewer sources.
No comments on Computer, I’ve heard good things but didn’t receive credits for trying it, it’s probably outside of what I want to pay.
I guess it makes sense though, unless you've got the lowest pricing on your own model how can you compete.
I would draft a development plan with Claude on there, then feed it to Claude Code. This isn't sustainable, but given that I had x number of months pre-paid for, I just used it.
Imagine all of the blast radius to society if this type of incentive is reproduced everywhere. Police searches through Flock databases, matches for hiring candidate resumes, organizing targets in a war with Iran, etc.