Mozilla launches MDN Plus service in some regions
Last month, rumors pointed to an imminent release of a new subscription service by Firefox maker Mozilla. Today, Mozilla announced the launch of MDN Plus, a new subscription-based service officially on the company's developer blog Mozilla Hacks.
MDN Plus extends the development resource that Mozilla maintains, without taking away features from free users. Web developers may access the main MDN website to access documentation on web technologies such as CSS, HTML or JavaScript.
MDN Plus is a premium subscription service launched in March 2022 by Mozilla. The service allows users to customize their MDN Web Docs experience through premium features such as Notifications, Collections and MDN Offline.
MDN Plus introduces two paid tiers and a basic tier that developers may subscribe to. These tiers extend the core functionality of MDN. The following three plans have been created:
- MDN Core -- The basic option gives limited access to the premium features.
- MDN Plus 5 -- Adds access to notifications, collections and offline use of MDN.
- MDN Supporter 10 -- Gets every feature of MDN Plus and a direct feedback channel to the MDN team.
MDN Plus is available for $5 per month or $50 per year, MDN Supporter 10 for $10 per month or $100 per year.
For now, paid plans are only available in the United States and Canada. Mozilla plans to expand the availability of the subscriptions to the following countries in the coming months (and others, that Mozilla did not mention): France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.
The three main features of the MDN Plus plan:
- Notifications -- Subscribers may follow pages on MDN to receive notifications when content changes; this helps them stay up to date on technologies and topics.
- Collections -- The option to save pages on desktop and mobile, and to gain access to automatic collections based on viewed articles. Collections may be filtered and sorted.
- Offline Access -- A Progressive Web Application that gives subscribers access to MDN content while they are offline. May also improve the performance as content may load faster when it is available offline.
Feedback and research done in 2020 and 2021 indicated that MDN users were interested in additional features. The three main features of MDN Plus reflect the feedback according to Mozilla.
Mozilla plans to reinvest some of the subscription money into improvement the MDN Web documentation. All users, free or commercial, will benefit from this.
Closing words
MDN Plus is completely optional and all existing content remains accessible freely. Mozilla will reinvest some of the earned revenue into the site and the service. Revenue from subscription-based services increases year-over-year. The last revenue report, for the year 2020, shows an increase by $10 million from $14 million in 2019 to $24 million in 2020. Several products that Mozilla launched were not available in all regions at the time, and the 2021 revenue report will likely see another increase in revenue.
Services such as Mozilla VPN or Firefox Relay Premium contribute a small percentage to Mozilla's overall revenue, which still comes to a very large percentage from search engine deals.
Now You: are subscription-based products the right way to diversify Mozilla's income?
Ok
I agree with this, MDN is a great resource, people who can/want to pay should give it back.
Are subscription-based products the right way to diversify Mozilla’s income?:- Yes
Fill Mitchell Baker’s pockets while everything else in Mozilla that matters suffers?
Mozilla hasn’t successfully diversified their income so far, their graveyard of failed side projects is very big already. They don’t offer products anyone would want to use and their products are usually not better than their competitors in any given space they’ve dipped their toe into. Firefox is subpar as well, but retains a user base (albeit a shrinking one) from the IE days when it managed to be better than literal IE6.
This foundation will never get away from its dependence on sugar daddy Google, if their history is anything to go by.
And yeah, obviously the comment above mine is correct. Their board is filling their pockets as much as possible before the ship sinks. Sad but true.