Recently, I was willing to pay £80 for something that would save me a couple of clicks and a bit of back and forward. Given how much I do the same task, it’s worth that amount to save the time and bother. Not worth much more, but the right ballpark.
I’d been using the service for free and I was still willing to pay the £80. But consensus online was that my small use case wasn’t close to any limits, so wasn’t worth paying for. I was considered a light user.
But one day, without warning, the service restricted my access. They placed a hard stop on my use. The company had placed a new limit on free use, giving them a one-off number of runs before allowing nothing until they pay up.
When I went to pay, I found the one-off payment had gone up in price by far more than double, to over £200.
This sudden change made no sense.
I explained to the public-facing member of the 3-person team that I'd still happily pay up to £100 right away, and I told them my basic use case. But apparently, the team had been clear and explicit when they stated there would be no exceptions when the price went up. I guess I lost that memo; more fool me!
Their suggestion was to pay a monthly fee instead. Even the most basic monthly tier would cost nearly £200 over a single year.
And that was that. No exception.
Not the time for hardball?
There are cases when it makes sense to refuse negotiation or make concessions.
But for small companies wrapping a bit of extra functionality around generative AI? I'd say it's worth finding ways to take on interested users, even if they can't—or won't—pay full price.
If the company can't afford to budge for anyone, it's probably worth upping the list price. Or change the pricing structure. Or something.
Playing hardball when I was willing to pay money didn't make sense.
I don't know their business case, but the events leading up to the situation, and the subsequent refusal to go beyond a hard no, didn’t seem an approach to benefit anyone.
Maybe the company needs to establish more stable revenue. Strict pricing projects a confidence of their worth, but at what cost?
They expressed surprise that many potential customers were far less willing to pay monthly than to pay a one-off fee. That sounds like a possible disconnect or a gap in understanding. My use case wasn't using the full power of the service, so I guess I was not worth their bother?
But it's a small and competitive market. That's before you even think about how quickly the companies could become obsolete. With that in mind, I can't help but think they would have benefitted with my money, especially given my already limited use.
Winning… For how long?
All these little companies popping up have tools that perform specific AI tasks well. Some are free, some cost a little, and some are super expensive. They range from fully featured to quite basic. Most have built their services on top of generative AI, like the algorithms trained by OpenAI, Anthropic, and so on.
The better a user knows how to manipulate the main generative AI, the less they'll need the extra services.
I simply went back to my original free method that took a bit of extra time. And very soon after, I found another service that did exactly what I needed. They even offered extra features at a lower cost than the original £80 of the first service!
Because AI stuff is still in an early and evolving stage, lots of small companies that offer a service on top of algorithms are in a position to lose.
These services may survive for the short- to medium-term, but eventually, the proprietary AI services will add more features and get easier to use. They'll make extra services unnecessary, even for basic users.
What you want. And you’ll never know it.
So this isn't a complaint, or me calling out a company. It's a curious comment on how precarious much of the AI scene is. Messy and confused. I'm guessing only a small proportion of companies will stick around. Far, far more will disappear.
It may include companies that do exactly what you're wishing for right now. And the likelihood is that they'll disappear before you've even found out about them.
Let's just say this... I'm not about to start my own dedicated AI company any time soon!