It might be worthwhile to differentiate between the different kinds of comments here, to get a sense of who discusses what from which perspective:
Let’s start with the business perspective: Some people are trying to figure what would make beeminder viable, what could be tried to make users like or at least tolerate the pricing changes and what beeminder can or can’t do ethically. This takes two forms: an insider perspective and outsider perspective. The insiders are the people who are running beeminder. The outsiders are simply users.
The users perspective: Some people are describing the situation for the users. Some of those comments are individual reports and some of them are trying to abstract from their immediate case to a general picture of who the beeminder user is (how the user is constructed) and how this pricing change acts on that user. Regardless of the style of comment “time of being with the service” is an important variable even though it has very different outcomes in the types of comments.
Generally speaking though, what people trying to figure out is how a stable pricing system could look like that seems:
a) viable (so the service sticks around)
b) stays true to comments/slogans made earlier by beeminder
c) convincing on its own
d) reliable (in terms of generating revenue and in terms of being predictable for the user)
This “search for the perfect pricing scheme” is either directly or indirectly articulated in all of these comments so far and it seems to me, that proposed solutions can be divided into those who think that beeminder has the general outlook of the pricing right (that is: have a free tier/trial period and premium) or that they don’t (scratch premium completely and ask for support payments instead, make payments for features goal based, etc.). It seems to me that mostly people are suggesting in a “yes and” way: Most want/are (begrudgingly) fine with to keep premium around (in one form or another) but they also want $change. This $change can for example be a different payment feature yet not implemented or a pricing change.
Now, what is actually happening around this discussion is the following: Participation in the discussion (no matter how you are participating) is rewarded: free goals, steep discounts, etc. are seemingly happening all the time to those people who are engaged participants in this discussion. Here’s the kicker and I’m not sure @dreev is aware of this: The actual pricing scheme for beeminder seems to be very much unstable and is much more individual then what is getting discussed here and that not only in the sense that this is implied in trying to figure out pricing but also in a very general sense of approach to doing business. Take as a different example the pricing scheme of headspace and notice that there is no discussion about pricing taking place, no obvious discounts (apart from paying for longer amounts of time) are being advertised and so on. I’m not saying that beeminder should do it like these folks do, but I’m saying we’re seemingly all discussing (as the ideal pricing scheme) something like headspace’s scheme whereas beeminder’s general approach to doing business is much more open and as a consequence of that much less straight forward as well.
In short: the opacity of pricing (and the problems of reliability for users and the company) is a consequence of the approach to business that beeminder follows. Discussing an “ideal pricing scheme” is not taking into account this fundamental difference that sets beeminder apart from other businesses. Beeminders more democratic approach to pricing means also, that a stable pricing scheme without differences in “class” between users will not come (we already have grandfathered in users, users on a discounted plan, users who pay in full, etc. etc.) and therefore should be embraced.