# Thoughts behind Premium features

**URL:** <https://forum.beeminder.com/t/thoughts-behind-premium-features/245>\
**Category:** Akrasia\
**Created:** [November 19, 2014, 12:56pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/thoughts-behind-premium-features/245 "2014-11-19T12:56:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 12:14am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/thoughts-behind-premium-features/245/3 "2014-11-20T00:14:20Z")

</div>

I agree about premium vs non-premium features (see also [my reply in a recent thread about retroratchet](http://forum.beeminder.com/t/thoughts-about-retroratchet/229/3 "Short version: configurable retroratchet should not be premium but the generalized road dial maybe should. Autoratchet should maybe also not be premium but not certain about that. It does make the yellow brick road act crazy which is bad for newbees.")) but disagree about us needing to make you fail a certain number of times.

Rather, we think of it like this: If you’re the kind of person who’s going to get massive value out of Beeminder then you’re necessarily going to derail now and then, at least at lower amounts of money. If the graph itself were sufficient motivation and you never ever derailed then you clearly didn’t really need Beeminder in the first place. More on [Beeminder’s seemingly perverse incentives](http://blog.beeminder.com/perverse "Perverse Incentives and the Paradox of Beeminder’s Sting") on the blog.

PS: There’s a ton of discussion about premium plans still in the old [Akratics Anonymous Google Group](https://groups.google.com/d/forum/akratics "The Akrasia category here in the Beeminder forum is meant to replace the discussion that used to happen there") which you can find in the first few hits [searching for “premium” there](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/akratics/premium "56 posts in 'we're ready to launch Beeminder Premium for real' in 2013, and then 53 posts in 'help us decide about a price hike for beeminder premium plans' in July 2014, followed by 23 more posts in 'QS only vs QS X, and removing features' in September 2014"). I’ll reproduce my last thought from those threads here:

> All ideas related to premium plans are going back on the shelf for now while we digest the latest feedback. So if we can pause all thoughts on that […]
> 
> Thanks again, everyone! Insanely helpful as always.  
> Danny and Bethany and Alice et al
> 
> Again, we’re finding Daniel, Sean, and Tom’s points persuasive. And in fact they’re mostly just urging us to stick to our original principles, as outlined in the “[No Carrots For You](http://blog.beeminder.com/premium#nocarrots "No Carrots as in no dangling carrots, ie, no core features paywalled purely to entice you to upgrade")” section of the announcement of premium plans. And I agree that #2 (“things that are confusing to newbees”) is too fuzzy.

---

_[View the full topic](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/thoughts-behind-premium-features/245)._