Hi Technicolor Cheetah !

Is your iTunes currently displaying the $6.99 price? eloquentz is right that we're testing an offering of a new monthly option, but the test should only affect new subscribers and not iOS users already subscribed at the $6.99/month price.

Faness So you’re saying that you are testing if new people are willing to pay an extra $60 per year to have the option of paying monthly?

jenmas I think she was talking about testing the technical capability of charging monthly vs annually. They seem to be getting some answers, though what you're suggesting would be an interesting way to do market research. 

It makes perfect sense that the monthly rate would be higher than the annual rate - there is a learning curve for the software and it also takes time for people to make behavioral changes based on the better information of YNAB (perhaps its source of power). One free month is seriously not enough to experience and evaluate that, anyways. 

If people are in a monthly plan, they have less psychological reason to stick with it, and are more likely to cancel. Most people seem to be asking for the monthly option at the start of their YNAB time, citing the fact that they need time to save up. With a higher monthly plan, it might take an extra month or two for them to save up, but that will be good motivation.

If YNAB puts promotion in place like, "if you choose to go annually by month 3, you'll get $15 back (from the monthly overages paid)," then neither party loses and there is greater incentive to properly get going as a new user.  It could even be "by or after month 3," so that someone who needs 5 months to save still gets some incentive.

Obviously, these are just my ideas and YNAB is welcome to do as they please.

Move Light Sound Life when the web-based YNAB was first introduced, they offered a monthly subscription which they discontinued because they stated it wasn't being used by customers, so the testing for technological capability sounds a bit disingenuous. The OP stated that some people are seeing $11.99 as the price in the iOS App Store.

jenmas Yeah, I know.  There have also been some recent threads with people complaining that monthly isn't an option because they can't save up that much. On those threads, various people suggested options like quarterly or semi-annually to help mitigate the problem. The response was that they'd look into it. They seem to be doing just that.

Of course, I don't know what YNAB sees from feature requests, but this seems a lot like the time when people were complaining about pending transactions not coming through on import, and a beta was started to address that quite quickly.

It makes me think that maybe I should just complain without offering solutions for the UI things I think need improvement. Maybe that would get better traction in terms of actual response. 

Don't worry, I think that would be inappropriate, and I hope never to get so caught up that it happens. But the phenomenon has been observed.

This particular change only has effect on me indirectly - through people I recommended to YNAB. 

mayra oh I completely agree with you. I also think the $83.99 is way overpriced and I wouldn't pay that for YNAB either. I believe that Faness never actually answered your original question. You asked is $11.99 a thing that people are being asked to pay. She did not address that in any way shape or form in her reply.

jenmas 

Faness said:
Our product team is still determining whether to offer a monthly subscription option, so there hasn't been an official announcement about it just yet. If we do decide to offer the monthly option to everyone, then we'll make an announcement and address pricing there as well. :)

Faness said:
the test should only affect new subscribers and not iOS users already subscribed at the $6.99/month price.

 I think the answer is "perhaps, perhaps not, but not yet."

Had I only chosen YNAB years ago, I, too could have a much reduced annual price. As it happens, I tried Mint and my brother tried YNAB. He's got the low price and uses YNAB like Mint! Sigh. 

mayra What I mean is, YNAB hasn't actually offered "monthly subscription", it has always been an annual amount. There was a recent thread where Faness said that they were going to start offering it again. I assumed there would be a premium price to paying monthly vs annually.

Hi mayra !

eloquentz is exactly right! We're testing the offering of a monthly subscription option, but this is currently just a test - not all YNABers will see that monthly option. Our product team is still determining whether to offer a monthly subscription option, so there hasn't been an official announcement about it just yet. If we do decide to offer the monthly option to everyone, then we'll make an announcement and address pricing there as well. :)

WordTenor That is such an interesting use of the word criminal, and coming from a linguist in the Ed sector! :) 

Sorry, I couldn't resist! 

I don't want YNAB to get more pricey, either, and I'm really not a fan of SaaS models because the customers are at the mercy of these changes without the option to keep a previous version going in our lives. What are we to do?

Move Light Sound Life I functional shift all the things. :)  But criminal is an adjective and therefore fits perfectly fine as the subject complement to a noun phrase... 

Tomato Colt yes, I have the same dilemma. $84/year (-10% for being a YNAB4 user) is a lot

Falconar Exactly my thoughts. I've used the classic YNAB for 10 years and have appreciated how it has helped me budget. However, knowing that I will now have to continue to pay forever for the program makes me very leery of converting to the online version. Looking at how many employees the company now has makes me realize why they need the constant income stream these days. So sad that so many programs are now going completely online.

Hi Tomato Colt ! I sent you a quick email. We hope you've seen the value of YNAB during the trial! And wish you the best, no matter your decision. 🙂

Silkyshark I've also been a YNAB 3/4 user for a long time (I originally got YNAB3 because it supported Linux, way back when!) and it changed my financial life, but i've been in a 'maintaining' state for a long time. I can see the value proposition if you're new to budgeting and everything's a mess, there are numerous easy wins that more than pay back the cost, but once you are past that, it's a lot to keep paying. 

I'm still in the trial, as OSX is finally about to kill off YNAB4, and I do like it, but the cost of nYNAB is easily more than I pay for *any other* online service. And it repeats, each and every year.

As context, i've just renewed Office 365 for my family of five (including 1TB oneDrive, etc.) with Microsoft for $20 less than a one year of YNAB  would cost just me (my early-20s kids would benefit from YNAB if it was a family licence, but it isn't so they'd have to buy their own - overall that would be 4x the cost of Office365 for the family!). Similarly, it's significantly more than Amazon Prime, Netflix, or Spotify, etc.

So I agree, at $40 (like, e.g. Strava, which I subscribe to) nYNAB would be a no-brainer. At double that, it's much harder, especially as it doesn't do much more than free options (e.g. in the UK MoneyDashboard costs nothing and direct import actually works, although budgeting and categorization isn't as smooth as YNAB). If it goes up more, then easy, i'm out.

Hmmm.

Mx Emmin I'm fine with the subscription concept, and understand why YNAB moved to it. It's just the level that it's set at that's the issue for me. I'm struggling to see the value at $84/year, especially if you compare that to other subscription offerings elsewhere. 

I remember part of the argument for a subscription model being regular features and updates, but reading through the forums basic things (stealing from the future, reimbursements) still aren't getting looked at, years after nYNAB first appeared. Reports seem very basic too.