Subscription Model Feedback for Kagi

ArchitSasta

Vlad Why do I prefer Kagi over Neeva? It has to do more with personal preference due to much better privacy by default at Kagi, if you read the privacy policy of Neeva, they usually do a ton of promises but they still collect things like IP address and etc about you, the device you are using and etc, even though some of the data is erased after 90 days, it's not the best practices, even though Neeva is somewhat better than Google for privacy. I also like the discussions feature and how Kagi is focused truly on privacy by default.

ArchitSasta

ArchitSasta To add in, i also love how Kagi feels lightweight and a lot quicker in-terms of performance.

Vlad

ArchitSasta

We are paving the way for the future of search that is ad-free, user-centric and we are completely aware that not everyone can afford to pay for it now, but that is OK.

We do not get to choose any price for the product, but we have to use the price that covers at least the cost of search, which for an average user is about $10/month, because Kagi uses more data sources than any search engine out there and this means that we get best results but also that it costs more to have them. When we charge $10/mo that means we are break even with cost of search, and then I still have to pay out of my own pocket all salaries for Kagi (because Kagi is still completely bootstrapped and user-centric, not VC-centric).

If you have a way to reduce our cost of search from $10 to say $5 we would be happy to listen carefully, but for now we do not have a choice and will likely have to increase the price because we are currently still losing money. In other words, if Kagi changed price to $5/mo today, we would gain a ton of users and for each we would lose $5/mo on average, meaning we would only accelerate our way to bankrupcy.

If it helps create the right mental model, think about Kagi as Tesla for search. Tesla is paving the way for humanity to get to sustainable energy. In doing so they sell $100,000 USD electric cars. Can everyone afford to have a Tesla? No. Is that still OK? Yes. Are they still the world leader in moving is to sustainable energy. Yes.

Teslas do not cost $100,000 because they are a luxury, but because the best electric car in the world costs that much to produce. Same thing is with Kagi. We are aware we can not reach every user with our price today, but that is OK. Our goal is to show what the future of user-centric search looks like and to create the best search experience that money can buy. It just so happens that you can not create a fantastic search experience at $5/mo but more likely it has to be around $15/mo mark.

This includes not only the best search results, but like you noticed, best privacy and performance. We are making no compromises for our users. All these things have a cost and this cost has to be fully paid by our users, there are no 3rd parties, data monetization deals or VCs involved with Kagi to pay for the difference.

ArchitSasta

Vlad Hey Vlad, i am a huge car enthusiast and let me clarify that not all Teslas cost 100k, the model 3 starts approximately at 45k (biden's new bill means the tax credit will help the price point come even more down) and that's currently the most affordable price point and it's constantly dropping. Regarding Kagi of course, I just saw that we use Google as one of the sources, which means we pay for their API, i believe embracing/keeping Bing and other sources and ditching Google would be a great idea. Sure, will the search results slightly worsen? Most probably, but I think a lot of other search engine alternatives have done a great job with just using Bing as main base. Take a look at Neeva, they don't use Google results at all, they rely on Bing, Apple, their own crawler and etc, their search results are great, and usually/at times much better than Google or atleast on-par. Not only is not using Google as a source means we are saving that money but also stop supporting the monopoly, because then Kagi is in a similar position like Firefox where google pays money to firefox (which is also mozilla's main biggest income source) to have Google as default on Mozilla's browser. In this case, we are paying for Google results, and jn-directly supporting them, i would rather be completely independent from Google as well.

That said, i would like to know the list of sources we get our results from (and the percentage of every source use on Kagi) and even the slightest reduction from 10 to 8 dollars is a great start and of course, make the free plan more usable by making it slightly more lenient from 50 searches/per month.

Vlad

ArchitSasta

not all Teslas cost 100k, the model 3 starts approximately at 45k

Kagi is more at an early stage when they only had roadster and model X/S was just announced. And even a $45k model 3 is far, far from being affordable to everyone today. Reality is simply that you can not make a breakthrough and expect everyone will be able to pay for it.

Sure, will the search results slightly worsen? Most probably,

As soon as you really start to search the web, it is not sufficient.

For example try searching for ArchitSasta car on a few search engines and compare results with Kagi (it is just a random search I wanted to see if you had any tweets that mention cars since you brought it up). It gets even worse for them when you use exact match "ArchitSasta" "car" site:twitter.com and try to help search engine by precisely telling it where to look.

Our users do need and pay for the best search results possible. Not everyone searches like this all the time but when they do it is important that they find what they are looking for! For us, it is all about providing the best possible results to our users at all times.

ArchitSasta

Vlad I'll be very honest with you, I have been using Kagi and Neeva side by side before moving, and i can promise you that Neeva was providing great quality results, just as good as kagi and at times better especially when it comes to instant answers on definitions and etc. Keep in mind Neeva does this with using Bing as main index unlike Kagi which uses Google as well. At times i even find Neeva better than Google (major reason being ad-free but based on bing, it's doing much better than expected when it comes to the quality of search results.

ArchitSasta

ArchitSasta And cars are very different to search engines. Tesla could easily push the price down by changing things like seats from leather like high quality materials to normal cloth seats, make other features like autopilot an optional subscription and etc. (Legacy automakers are already coming up with cars more affordable than Teslas with electric cars slowly reaching that below 40k mark). Search engines are not something physical as car (there are so many factors such as battery cost, kind of motor you are using, range, and etc when discussing about electric cars being expensive, people just think about Tesla when it comes to electric vehicles but there are already many EVs under 30k from other car brands), they are very different and I think it is a great idea to get rid of Google as a source. We are also supporting Google by paying them for their API.

i am going to say it again, the truth is Kagi overall isn't any better than Neeva when it comes to many common queries and search results, even with Google as one of the sources. We could even run an experiment with keeping every other source except google, replacing whatever position google has in Kagi's results with Bing.

The Tesla roadster was also something that had market demand at that time, even though it was at that time and small demand compared to a traditional sedan or SUV, there are rich people who paid for it, but Nissan leaf was equally or more successful actually with the Nissan leaf, an affordable comapact EV that was the early pioneers of electric cars, it was not just Tesla even though they are the ones who often get credited. But just because people paid over 100k on a car doesn't mean they will pay 10 bucks a month for a search engine. My point is it's 2 very different things, paid search engines are very new to many people outside the power users/private heads world, and even for privacy heads or power users, many in a lot of discussions on variety of platform have said i would consider Kagi if it was just a little bit cheaper, better fre plan and overall, more accessible.

Vlad

ArchitSasta I agree that can be the case for general type of searches, but for that DDG is good enough too.

I gave a precise example when relying on Bing alone is just not good enough as it yields zero relevant results.

Vlad

ArchitSasta

Tesla could easily push the price down by changing things like seats from leather like high quality materials to normal cloth seats, make other features like autopilot an

The main cost driver for Tesla are the cost of batteries. Teslas do not even have leather seats but leather imitations. In fact the interior of Tesla is striped down to bare minimum and nothing like luxury cars. This is all in effort to reduce cost.

i am going to say it again, the truth is Kagi overall isn't any better than Neeva

That may be true for you and I can uderstand it. In case some other search engine satisfies all your needs for great results, privacy respecting and fast search engine, it would be indeed unwise for you to pay more money to get the same thing elsewhere.

However we know that our customers strongly prefer Kagi, even though a cheaper alternative exists. We believe that this is because Kagi is a superior product and the best search engine that money can buy today. We plan to keep innovating our product experience, continue having best search results in the world and continue to lead the parade in user-centric search.

ArchitSasta

Vlad It is very true that if Tesla wanted to, they could most certainly make a cheaper vehicle, cloth seats are still much cheaper than fake leather, and it just isn't seats, there are a lot of other things. If it wasnt true, more affordable EVs like Kia Niro EV, Nissan leaf, Hyundai Kona EV, Chevy BOLT, the fisker ocean, coming soon Chevy Equinox won't exist, they are all below, exactly or close to 30k.

But makes no sense to argue about that since cars can't be compared to search engines. I have included many points that was just ignored or not replied by you in my previous replies, so no point personally for me to continue repeating.

Vlad

ArchitSasta

If it wasnt true, more affordable EVs like Kia Niro EV, Nissan leaf, Hyundai Kona EV, Chevy BOLT, the fisker ocean, coming soon Chevy Equinox won't exist, they are all below, exactly or close to 30k.

I am not saying that a cheaper EV can not be built, but that it would not be as good as Tesla. None of these other cars have the range of Tesla, supercharger network like Tesla and other things that matter in an EV car.

Tesla is not in the business of making an EV but in the business of making the best EV. Same for Kagi - we are not in the business of just making search and of course search can be cheaper than Kagi - most people can still have it for free today without a need to pay anything. But that is not what we are trying to do. We are in the business of making the best search, that has extra costs attached and makes Kagi premium similar like Teslas are premium to other EVs.

I have included many points that was just ignored or not replied by you in my previous replies, so no point personally for me to continue repeating.

Sorry that you feel that way, I did my best to answer your questions. I do really appreciate you taking the time to share your honest thoughts and wanting to help.

I'd like to add that Kagi will have a $5/mo starter plan in the future that will incude 200 searches with additional searches avaialble as pay per use ($0.0025 per search) and hopefully this will make Kagi more approachable to many more users.

Bzmz

Have you considered having a pay per search plan in addition to the subscription.

For eg: For 10$, you give 700 free searches and beyond that you charge exactly what it costs for a search.

I think, instead of changing the subscription amount, keeping it at 10$ and playing around with how many free searches you can provide will be better. As more people join and scaling lets you reduce cost per search, the amount of free searches can be increased.

10$/month most people who want an alternate to Google/Bing ..etc would be willing to pay. With this model, your risks are reduced. You make a profit when people use it for less than 800 searches per month and whenever they use more the cost per search pays for that

Vlad

Bzmz Yes. As you can imagine pricing is complex. Our biggest concern is allowing people to try Kagi at pric epoints that are lower than $10. We are going to unveil our newest thinking about pricing on Discord to have a discussion with the community (hint: plans will start at $3.95/mo)