Let the Pro Fleecing Begin!

So, just wanted to pop in and say… I hate the new pricing structure. It’s overly complex, and does not appear to deliver substantial additional value… The ‘regular’ Pro level is now more than I would pay for dailyburn, and the Pro Lite is pathetic – you’re really going to serve up ads to people who are paying you $50 a year?

Sounds like you guys need to get MORE USERS, not squeeze your existing loyal crew. And I’m not sure how you’ll do that, now that you’ve gone and made paying for the site a much worse deal. :(

I do appreciate the attempt to buy existing Pros’ silence by “upgrading” their accounts “for free”. Not sure I’ll renew, though.

Again, really, really, you guys need to go back to the nicely bifurcated freemium model, and just keep adding great features to Pro to make it a breakthrough product. And yeah, maybe never ever drive off into the sunset in your ferraris. But that’s life.

I have to agree about how much I hate the new Pro pricing structure! Why do you have to make things more confusing? What are you? Microsoft trying to sell a bunch of different levels of software and support? Stupid. I doubt I will be renewing. I have lost A LOT of respect for DailyBurn with this new scheme!

Thanks for the comments and we are listening.

Our user growth has been outstanding this year and we really aren’t trying to squeeze anyone. “Buying silence” is really not accurate – we want to reward our first PROs with more and let them keep the price they agreed to pay. We think this is only fair… in fact, they can keep the same pricing as long as they stay a PRO member.

Elite is really going to offer some great services, and new updates to PRO are going to really take this site to a new level.

It is just confusing. I don’t want to have to worry about how many of these reports I get or what I can or can’t get at this level or that level. Now with the Elite function it just adds another layer of confusion. Just give us a paid level and a non paid level and be done with it.

Oh well. I guess it was fun while it lasted. I wish you the best of luck with this new approach but I think you are going to find it is going to confuse your customers more then help them.

I’ll agree. It’s confusing and I am perfectly paying my $15 for every three months for the Pro features.

I hate when companies do this to paying customers. Get ’em hooked, them bend them over.

Hey ericjgruber,

I am confused at how this is bad for existing PROs. You are grandfathered in and never have to pay more. In fact, you get more for less. As long as you stay a PRO you will continue to pay $15 every three months.

If that’s the case, then it wasn’t clear to me (and your e-mails links didn’t work, by the way). Oh well, too late I guess. I already downgraded my account.

Honestly, you should have just kept it simple: paid or not paid.

Yeah, this seems like a horrible move by your part, DB staff. Have maybe two levels of paid, I guess, but seriously…that high paid price for the “Elite” account, is more than if you went and paid for a membership on the stupid Biggest Loser site, where there you can talk to actual trainers already, people from the show, etc. I came here because of the potential, and while I feel it’s already a great site, this move just seems very poor to me. Why not at least make the pricing comparable to the BL site? You say in the email that Pro members are upgraded, but you never say to which level? If we get ads for any paid account, that is VERY lame, guys. Seriously. absmith, you say we get more for less, so what “more” are we getting that we didn’t before? Again, this just seems like a very confusing/non-thought out roll out to your fans.

Hey esheldon76…

All of our legacy PRO members remain PRO, but will not be charged extra (they are grandfathered in to the higher level at the same price). They get access to the new PRO fitness reports and new PRO features right around the corner.

I think the messaging was a little confusing, especially in the email. We apologize for that.

Again though, absmith, which level of PRO are we being grandfathered in to?

Hey esheldon76… You are grandfathered into PRO (the middle tier).

Okay, that’s at least nice to see. Yes, the email needed to be clearer. Thank you for at least putting us paid users into that class of the Pro accounts.

I have to second some of the comment.

I’m not too angered but the email was almost useless. Which level of PRO was I being upgraded to? What do I get that I didn’t before. I was testing the PDF printout in the last few weeks, and now I won’t be able to use it as much? Does that count as a new feature?

I’ll continue using DailyBurn, I like it lots. Not sure I would pay the new price, for me a T-Shirt and gymbag are my advertising space, not something I should have to pay extra for. I don’t know what the extra features are on the PRO elite account, it didn’t say in the e-mail. I wish that there had been more communications regarding this. Maybe some pre-warning and a detailed explanation.

Thanks for clearing it up on the forum, I hope everyone gets to see it.

Absmith, I will most likely go PRO if there is an application built for BlackBerries. Also if you check that thread, you will se others like myself asking for the app.

Cool Stride, we hear you loud and clear!

I think the talk around the grandfathering is a perfect example of the confusion level amongst existing folks, who at least already “get” your product. It can’t be better for people kicking the tires.

Speaking of tires, maybe an example from the car space can help you see the light:

Mercedes is trying to get consumers to associate alphanumeric labels with nine-plus different ideas.

The bare basics are: C-Class, E-Class, S-Class, CLK-Class, CL-Class, SLK-Class, SL- Class, M-Class, G-Class, with a sprinkling of AMGs, SLRs, CDIs and MLs tossed-in where needed for greater obfuscation. And those are just the alpha vegetables in the alphanumeric soup.

Here is the whole 36-car pile up: C230 Kompressor Sport Coupe, C230 Kompressor Sport Sedan, C240 Luxury Sedan, C240 Luxury Wagon, C320 Sport Coupe, C320 Luxury Sedan, C320 Sport Sedan, C55 AMG, E320 Sedan, E320 CDI, E320 Wagon, E500 Sedan, E500 4MATIC Wagon, E55 AMG, S430 Sedan, S500 Sedan, S55 AMG, S600 Sedan, CLK320 Coupe, CLK320 Cabriolet,CLK500 Coupe, CLK500 Cabriolet, CLK55 AMG Coupe, CLK55 AMG Cabriolet, CLS500 Coupe, CLS55 AMG, CL500 Coupe, CL55, AMG CL600, Coupe, CL65 AMG, SLK 350 Roadster, SLK55 AMG Roadster, SL500 Roadster, SL55 AMG, SL600 Roadster, SL65 AMG, ML350 SUV, ML350 SUV Special Edition, ML500 SUV, ML500 SUV Special Edition, G500 SUV, G55 AMG, and SLR McLaren 4MATIC.

Unsurprisingly, it’s IMPOSSIBLE for the casual prospect to figure out any meaningful differences between these cars, which range from $30-450K.

An extreme example, but seriously… A paid plan with ads? That’s just sad. And artificially restricting the reporting? Also a lame “advantage” of elite. Think of it this way: it doesn’t cost more to provide the info, so charging more for it is just a money grab.

At the very least, you should consider the following: kill Pro-Lite, restore “Pro” with the $50/year pricing, and either add a TRULY compelling feature set to Elite, or drop it $50-100. Then you’d at least have free, paid, and premium, 3 options, nice and simple.

But unless the premium offering is more about truly ADDED VALUE, and not how much you’re restricting my access to the system, I’m not gonna bite. Think exclusive teleseminar with lance armstrong, or discounts to local gyms/marathons/etc. Or even just a really great execution on the custom consultation.

Sorry if I come off as rude, but it’s just really frustrating to see this kind of change in a product I really like – you guys need to find to be Apple and not AT&T… Give me something I WANT, and I’ll pay for it… But this just really comes off as something we didn’t ask for, that you’re doing solely to help the bottom line.

I agree, a paid plan should have no ads. I also don’t like limiting features like reporting and favorite foods. Just enable or disable, nice and simple.

I don’t see value in the elite plan. It costs the same amount as a Bally Total Fitness membership.

I havent been keeping up with Daily Burn as much as i’d like but was hoping to get going again. But then this morning i awoke to an email from Daily Burn notifying me of the changes. I was planning on cutting my daily burn pro account all together out of pure annoyance of the new pricing structure. It took too long to try to understand the new differences, to the point that i figured, screw it, im out. Im really only a pro member for the meal planning, and really nothing else. But then i saw this thread and i’m possibly reconsidering keeping my account. Without coming across this post, i had no idea id be grandfathered in. I HIGHLY suggest another email to existing pro users clarifying this.

Thanks everyone for the comments.

I think most of the confusion was caused by the email that was not very well worded. I apologize for the confusion, and especially the confusion of some who thought they were paying more, or getting less. I think we learned our lesson on this one. Pricing changes and new packages are always difficult in transition.

Whether or not the pricing changes are acceptable to new PRO users is definitely debatable and time will tell. We do appreciate the comments though and we are listening.

Most of all, we appreciate your passion for the product and I can tell by these comments that you are trying to help, not just complain about pricing changes. We have lots of really innovative content and features coming in 2010, and we are excited to show you some of it soon.

I would think your biggest concern should be that the free version is horribly cut-down compared to your competitors, and if people don’t initially sign up for the free version (rather than Sparkpeople, Fitday, or whatever) then they’ll never become pro members.

And yeah, the email was just horribly worded. You managed to get not 1 but at least 2 separate wrong interpretations of it, which takes some doing.

Wow. I was thinking of upgrading to Pro yesterday. If I understand correctly, the price doubled for Pro? I shouldn’t have dragged my feet. If I was on the fence for the old price, I’m probably not going to pay double.

Wow sprouty76,

I did not know there were other places to go like Dailyburn has. I thought that this was a one of the kind one stop place. I may go check them out — thanks.

After checking

Welp, Sparkpeople is not a serious place to log workout info. I tried to clone what I am doing here and their interface does not allow detail things and they cram exercises down your throat that you may never be interested in doing.

FitDay seems to be for dieting and there is not much else I can say about that one.

“We have lots of really innovative content and features coming in 2010, and we are excited to show you some of it soon.”

If you had released a bunch of new “innovative” features/content to help make sense of the massive price increase, maybe it would have softened the blow…. a little.

I signed up for Pro to try it out, and I probably would have signed up for my wife also. Now I will probably just cancel mine (grandfathered or not), and use something else.

I’m sticking with my upgraded Pro account for now. I’ll wait and see if the Elite accounts offer features that I can’t live without, but $200/year is WAY too steep for me, especially given that the real beauty of DB that I couldn’t get with other tools is all of the user-generated content, recipes and the forum here. WE offer some of the best features on this site/community, so I hope that the price points remain in the moderate range for most of the features.

I appreciate the DB needs to sustain themselves, and likely they’re working on paying back the Venture Capital funds that got them going, I just think that reducing debt overhead has to be balanced with maintaining the community loyalty – offending the early adopters who brought in friends and family as new DB members is a perilous path.

That said, I HATE site ads when I’m paying for a site pass, so when it’s time for me to re-up, I’ll likely go with the lowest priced plan that allows me to avoid the ads.

I was also confused by the email as I literally signed up for a pro account the very day before the email came out. I had to contact billing support to clarify the position re the ’
grand-fathering’. On this basis, the issue is really more for new potential subscribers to pro. I can say hand on heart that I would not have signed up for any level of ‘Pro’ if it still involved advertising. Consumers of the web 2.0 generation are just too accustomed to simple billing models now where a small outlay of cash at the very least lets us go ad-free. I agree with the comment above which calls for 3 plans – free (ad supported), Pro (enhanced full feature set), Premium (premium support, non-typical value add extras that a minority will want and will be prepared to pay for). Having only been a user for a few days, it is by far the best I have used. Some of the things that I particularly value are:

- iphone app (not perfect, but getting there)
-igoogle
- really good database of foods that are not just US-centric
- comprehensive body tracking and customisation
social media elements (could do with better FB integration rather than just twitter)
- Very prompt support (my query was answered within minutes)

At the $50 per year, I think the Pro level delivers good value and certainly there is plenty room for improving the User Experience with interim releases. At $75 per year, this could prove to be a tipping point for some though!

Lastly, I also agree that a second clarification email on pricing plans would be a good idea as this site will only improve if (a) paying members keep on paying! and (b) new customers are enticed to go pro. Whilst the competition may not be there yet with their sites, it can only be around the corner and I think delivering clear value from dailyburn will keep its leadership position rather than giving the perception (rightly or wrongly) that this is about restricting features that really are not worth the extra money.

My 2 cents worth anyway…