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Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash
When we started building Ludus two years ago, we decided to leave everything open enough to discover what kind of audience we could attract with what we built. Even though this strategy allowed us to learn a lot about the usage of the product, it confused a lot of people because we never had a clear positioning and nobody ever knew if Ludus was really tailored for them. Also, to support that strategy of keeping things as open as possible, we decided that our free version would have almost everything needed for a “normal” usage, so there was never strong incentives to upgrade to one of our paid offerings. As you might expect, this can have a lot of advantages, but at the same time, this is not very good for business.
As we now chose to position Ludus as a prime product for creative professionals, starting on March 25, 2019, Ludus won’t have a free version anymore, as we are moving from a freemium to a premium model. It means that after this date, new users signing up will be offered a 30-day trial period before they are charged (if they wish to continue using the product). It also comes with an update of our pricing as the Solo plan will now be at $14.99/month (if taken yearly) or $19.99 month-to-month and the Team plan will now be at $9.99/member/month (if taken yearly) or $14.99/member month-to-month (with a minimum of 2 members).
So now you’re wondering what this means for you. The good news is, if you’re already a paid user or team, nothing changes for you. As soon as you don’t cancel your subscription, you’ll stay forever on the pricing you’re currently at. If you’re a free user or team and if you upgrade before March 25, you’ll be able to enjoy our current pricing ($9/user/month or $99/user/year both for Solo and Team) before it changes, and stay on it forever. If you decide not to upgrade, starting on March 25, your presentations will still be viewable but become read-only and you won’t be able to create new ones.
From a product point of view, it means that we’ll now focus on professional features, especially those geared towards the teams. Our editing tool is where we spent most of our time until now but this is going to change. In the coming months, you can expect features like versioning, advanced publishing and sharing settings (including the possibility to invite external collaborators to edit your presentations), advanced metrics and more integrations with existing workflows (Google Drive, Dropbox or Slack for example).
We know this decision can be surprising, and it will probably disappoint a bunch of people, but you can rest assured that we gave it a lot of thoughts, and we are 100% convinced that it’s the way to go. Don’t hesitate to contact us directly if you have any questions regarding this new direction, and thank you for being a Ludus user.