Feedly brings back lifetime accounts for $299
RSS is the best way in my opinion to keep an eye on everything that is hot in a particular niche on the Internet in the shortest amount of time possible. I can go through hundreds of articles posted on a day in less than 10 minutes, pick out those of interest in numerous ways, and ignore the rest. No other service gives me that flexibility and speed.
Google Reader was without doubt the number one online feed reading service on the Internet. With its shutdown came other services that tried to fill the gap that it left, and the one service that -- probably -- did it right the most is Feedly.
The service does a lot of things right. It has a web-based interface that you can load in any browser of choice, app support, and an API that third party apps and programs can tap in for support.
A free service is provided by Feedly that is limited in several ways, including slower updating of "smaller" news feeds and no full article search option.
While it is understandable that Feedly distinguishes its Pro user accounts from free accounts, it has been criticized for making essential features such as the delivery time of news updates a Pro feature.
Pro accounts were available as monthly or yearly subscriptions up until now for $5 and $45 respectively. The company behind Feedly ran a limited lifetime license test before where 1000 users were allowed to subscribe to a lifetime license for $99.
That lifetime license is back now, but the price of it has more than tripled. You can buy a lifetime license of Feedly Pro for $299 currently so that you can use the Pro version of the service forever without having to make a payment again to the company.
If you compare that to the monthly and yearly subscription price, you will notice that it equals nearly 60 months of payment for the monthly price, and more than 6.6 years of service for the yearly subscription price.
That's a long commitment, and if you consider that services come and go on the Internet at all times, it is definitely a good idea to consider that before you get a lifetime license. If you think that the company will be around in ten years, and that you will still be using a feed reader at that time, then picking the lifetime license makes sense, as you will pay less over the course of the ten year period, provided that Feedly won't reduce pricing along the way.
What's your take on this? Would you pay $299 for a lifetime license?
Now Read: What you need to know about Feedly
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Well, yes $299 is too high of a price, but also they’re model is limited to one account — they need a multi-account model to lure my $!
I didn’t even use Google Reader for six years, no way in hell am I giving Feedly $299 for RSS.
I’m not a fan of Feedly, myself. I honestly think NewsBlur is the best service by a big margin, and even the free version is much better than Google Reader ever was. The web and mobile apps are just a pleasure to use, and I actually added many more subscriptions because Newsblur significantly increased the speed at which I could browse through them. I always thought the Google Reader web app was horrible and had to use Feed Demon on the desktop. The Google Reader mobile app was good, though.
Regardless of the service, be it Newblur or Feedly, I don’t see myself ever shelling out that much money for a lifetime account.
Not even Ghacks would get so much money, when I wouldn’t see any ads. The reason is simple, I can not expect it to be around for very long, I can not expect it to keep up the quality. (I hope it does all of that.)
Investing 250 bucks for Youtube being ad-free and with many features on top for the rest of its existence could be very worth the money, although one never knows how long it will be there.
Does SecondLife still exist? I guess people believing it would spread like a fire would have spend some bucks for a life-time license.
If the last 12 months have taught us anything it is that nothing appears to be off-limits for Google.
It would no longer surprise me very much if Google suddenly announced that they were shuttering Youtube and making everyone use Google+ instead…!
Yes, Second Life still exists.
Consider the time value of money….$45 in 6 years time would not really be worth $45. It would be wiser to pay a yearly fee for the service.
The company might not be around in 6 years time as you said.
A competitor might come and offer better service.
The service might have some issues which will make you at some point consider an alternative but if you’ve invested so much, you definetely will find it hard to switch.
Feedly effectively pulled a bait and switch attracting Google Reader users.
Their clear implication in management answers on their forum was
search would be fully implemented for everyone for free.
Now, everyone who has moved all their tags to Feedly
has no way to export them to import into another reader.
So if, you want to search them, then go Feedly Pro. Nice.
Feedly also makes it virtually impossible to close your account.
There is no assurance your data is actually erased at all.
This $299 lifetime deal exposes the nature of management.
It is a rip-off and in the light of angry users like me is
one bad investment as Feedly won’t be around.
Feedly is approaching this all wrong. Their prices are far too expensive, so they get very few subscriptions. If they charged $2/month or $20/year, I would absolutely subscribe, even though I don’t actually care about any of the subscription-only features, just to support the company.
The reason some services come and go is because free is a bad business model. Support the ones you like and they are more likely to stick around. Now with that said, $299 is a little high.
Definitely too expensive for me although I have no problem in principle with paying for RSS . Used theoldreader.com for a few months. Currently using inoreader.com so I can access on my phone but torn between it and QuiteRSS for desktop.
After months spent agonizing over which service to use as a GR replacement, Inoreader came along with a superior service, in many ways better than GR for $0. Many users, including myself, have offered to pay, but for now their model is a free one.
Hi Martin, interesting analysis of the price and “return on investment”. I would be very reluctant to splash out for a lifetime licence.
Too many web services are being killed off, ruined by poor development (either a lack of development or over-development) or being overtaken by newer entrants.
Twitter was launched a little over 7 years ago. 6.6 years is a very long time in tech!
That’s my main concern as well. I guess that most users would not have a problem paying $99 or maybe even $120 or so for a lifetime license, knowing that they save money from year 2.x onwards. Six years is such a long time span.
theoldreader.com $0
Had some problems a few months ago, but now under new management. Suits me fine.
I would not give them a penny.
If you are a rss poweruser and paying for feedly I would suggest you ask for a refund a try out inoreader.com.
I would be kinda of shocked if you didn’t like their service… well if you loved what google reader gave you, you will love InoReader.