Official launch day: March 1st

Tags: launch pricing

OK, we are finally here! All the pieces have fallen into place, albeit a little slowly, but I am excited to announce that Codaset will leave beta and launch officially this coming Monday March 1st.

This basically means that Codaset will start charging for some of its services, so I wanted to tell you more about the business model that I have chosen and how much you will be paying for your private projects hosted with us.

So as you may have read, I decided on an all new type of business model for code hosting industry. Usually, you pay host your code with a service, and they charge you on a monthly basis, based on a set of fixed pricing plans, and each pricing plan would include a fixed or maximum number of projects and/or disk space that you can use before you have to upgrade to the next plan and pay more. I've never been a fan of this, as it can mean you having upgrade to a more expensive plan, when all you need is one extra project, or a little more space. It's not exactly a relative system.

Codaset will operate a little differently on a "pay as you go" basis. Meaning you will only pay what for what you use. A few important points before I go further...

• Public or open source projects on Codaset will ALWAYS be 100% free - for life!
• Each of these public projects will include 200 MB of disk space. This will be monitored, but I don't plan on setting this as a hard limit. So don't worry if you exceed that. If you need more, just let us know, and we'll get you some more.
• Your first private or semi-private project will also be completely free - for life!

How's that for starters?

Once you exceed one private or semi-private project, monthly payments will be due. Even though Codaset's business model is based on a "pay as you go" system, I realized that charging customers credit cards for a dollar here and 50 cents there would not be cost effective for either side. Mostly for me to be honest, as I have banking charges to pay for each and every transaction. Which is why there will be a monthly minimum of $5 when you have more than one private or semi-private project.

So you can create your first private or semi-private project for free. Then when you create your second, an immediate payment of $5 will be due. That payment will be due every month thereafter for as long as you have more than one private or semi-private project.

This monthly minimum will allow you to create up to a total of six private or semi-private projects, and you will never pay more than $5 for those. However, once you create more than six private or semi-private projects, the "pay as you go" pricing will kick into place as follows...

• Each private or semi-private project will be charged at $0.04 per day.
• This pricing will only apply for each project above your first six.
• "Pay as you go" pricing is pro-rata based. So if you create a project and then delete it the next day, you will only pay $0.04.
• As with public projects, each private or semi-private project will also include 200 MB of disk space.

So as an example; if Bob has six private projects, he will pay $5 per month. He then creates another, which will be his seventh private or semi-private project. This seventh project will cost him $0.04 per day. So a month later, he will pay $5 plus $1.20 ($0.04 x 30 days). Costing him a total of $6.20 for 7 private projects. Not bad hey?

I know this may seem a touch confusing at first, but really it isn't. The best thing about it, is that you will pay for what you use. Just remember...

• First private or semi-private project is free.
• You can then create up to five more, making a total of six private or semi-private projects for only $5 per month.
• Every private or semi-private project thereafter will cost you only $0.04 per day (around $1.20 per month)

For all you early adopters who have several private projects already, I thank you! Any private or semi-private projects that have been created up until Wednesday February 24th, will be given six free private or semi-private projects for free. So usually, you would get one for free. But you guys are special, so I'm giving you six.

I really think this is a great way to host your software projects and code, and a very inexpensive one at that. You can try Codaset with no commitment or payments, and can do so for as long as you want. Then when you are ready, just pay for what you use. Create and delete projects as you wish, and your monthly payment will adjust accordingly.

So I really hope you like this new way of software project hosting, just like I hope you like Codaset and the new features it provides you as developers. I'm really excited about finally letting my baby loose into the world and would love to know your thoughts on the pricing and any thing else. Just leave your comments in reply to this post. I'll be posting again on Monday with full details of the launch.

Thanks again, and enjoy!