In my previous post I mentioned Kitely’s forthcoming changes to their pricing structure. I had a few questions regarding this and other aspects of Kitely so I contacted co-founder and CEO Ilan Tochner who was more than happy to answer my questions.
Ilan also talked about the Kitely market, arts and education in Kitely and how users would like hypergrid access. For the purposes of this interview CL is me and IT is Ilan Tochner … I think you probably worked that out for yourselves, now on with the interview!
CL : “What is happening to the free time based plan that provides users with one free sim and two hours worth of time based access a month?”
IT : “The Free Plan will be discontinued. The Regular Account that will replace it will also include 1 free Metered region (what is now called time-based billing region) but will not include the free time quota that you have now. What will replace that will be announced on Jan 1.”
CL : “If someone signs up this month for a Gold or Silver plan, even if they are not currently a registered user, will they be grandfathered in too?”
IT : “Yes, you’ll be grandfathered in as long as you create an account before the end of the year and get on the Silver or Gold plan before Jan 1. Please note that our backend uses GMT so US-based people shouldn’t wait until the late afternoon of December 31 to order because our system will already consider that to be Jan 1.”
CL : “The bronze plan granted people two free sims a month, will people currently on the bronze plan still be able to keep their 2 free regions a month when they are downgraded to a regular account?”
IT : “The Bronze Plan is discontinued, as stated in our announcement people who were on that plan will be switched to the Regular Plan on Jan 1. They will not have 2 regions grandfathered in as they are no longer paying us for a subscription (we canceled all the Bronze Plan holders’ PayPal subscriptions for our service). People who had more than one Metered world can continue paying for it using our standard 10KC/day/region rate. The only price change for Metered worlds is that OAR-based operations will cost 150KC/operation instead of 10KC/region/operation. Alternatively, they can export that world to an OAR file now (while it still costs just 10KC/region) and delete the excess world.”
CL : “When will you be announcing the new fixed price options?”
IT : “Fixed-price options will be announced when we make them available on Jan 1.”
CL : “Under what circumstances is the time based billing option, the better option for someone?”
IT : “Time-based billing can be better for Premium Account holders as it can provide them with a lot more regions for a much lower cost than paying for each region using a fixed-price option. When all the visitors they expect are Premium Account holders neither they nor their visitors have to actually worry about time as none of them will be paying extra for it. Funding other people’s access to your Metered world can still be cheaper than paying for a fixed-price world if you don’t get a lot of visitors/hours in that world.”
CL : “Just to clarify, minutes only apply to visits to time based regions, minutes are not deducted when someone visits a fixed price region?”
IT : “The entire concept of Minutes is irrelevant for fixed-price worlds. They aren’t used there. Those worlds are like regions in Second Life, you pay a fixed price for the month and no one is charged for time inside them.”
Continue reading “Ilan Tochner On Kitely’s Pricing Changes And More”