Monthly Plan Price Increase

Starting today, the cost of the Vicariously monthly plan will increase from $2 to $5. This change will only affect new customers. Existing users on the $2/month plan will be grandfathered in and continue to pay that rate indefinitely.

The primary motivation behind this change is to reduce the percentage of revenue going towards payment processing fees. Vicariously uses Stripe for payments and subscriptions. Stripe is a fantastic platform, however, its pricing model is not advantageous to small charges.

For each charge Vicariously makes, Stripe takes 3.4% + 30¢ in processing fees. For a charge totaling $2, Vicariously is paying 37¢ in processing fees resolving to an effective rate of 18.4%. That's tough to swallow. At $5, that rate gets reduced to 9.4%. That's still relatively high, but hey, at least it's under 10% – the arbitrary threshold set when deciding to make this change.

It's also important to note that most Vicariously customers opt for the yearly plan. It's affordable at $12/year and is the more sensible plan in most situations. In fact, the monthly plan only exists because I thought it made the subscription CTA more visually appealing. 🤫