In order to better serve all Crowd Space users, we began phasing out our advertising-supported free-to-use accounts on December 9, 2009. In October 2009 we introduced a paid (ad-free) subscription option that includes customer support. We are now adding a new subscription option and offering major discounts for existing users.
What Are My Options?
We are now offering a new Personal account for $7/month in addition to the existing Standard account for $180/year (or $18/month).
If you are currently using a free account, your account will remain free until February 1, 2010. If you upgrade to a Standard subscription by December 23, 2009, your first 3 months are free and the next 6 months will be half price.
Go to https://my.crowdspace.net/administration/subscription.aspx to upgrade your account.
Like Free? Partner With Us!
Become a Crowd Space affiliate partner and tell others about Crowd Space. If you sign up 9 new customers, your account will be free! Go to http://crowdspace.net/affiliates for all the details.
Why the Change?
The ad-supported option for Crowd Space was designed to let small groups with constrained budgets enjoy the benefits of a full featured Crowd Space account. Offering a product like Crowd Space is never truly free – we need to bring in revenue to provide a top quality service. The vision was for the attention of your group members to serve as a type of currency (we put ads in the emails you send to your group and the advertisers pay us, thus generating revenue for our company without your group having to dip into its budget). I had hoped this approach would be sustainable for Crowd Space but it simply is not. Although I am personally disappointed to no longer be offering free Crowd Space accounts, I am confident that our new Personal plan is affordable enough for even the smallest groups.
If you have questions, you can email me directly at derek@webradius.com.
Derek Hatchard
CEO, Web Radius Inc. / CrowdSpace.net