Feedly, which is considered to be the best Google Reader alternative, has gone premium. The new premium plan brings in some basic features which was available for free with Google Reader.
Google Reader was killed recently, and the entire internet was feeling let down by Google. Feedly, which had a huge user spike when Google Reader died, is now going pro. The new features which comes with Pro would cost you $5 per month or $99 a year. Which I personally think is a bad move by the developers.
When Feedly launched, I was pretty happy that the developers are trying to make something which would compete with Google Reader. I did not mind them placing ads on the streams along the sides too. All that was running in my mind was that the developers were good and they wanted to give Google Reader a run with their new free service. But today, all of that perspective changed for me.
I now have a perspective that the developers have been wanting to make maximum money out of the service, rather than giving users the best experience with all the ads they’ve placed on the site.
I was pretty much thinking about the statement the developers published, reasoning this move. The statement read:
“Feedly Pro makes us more sustainable and enable us to innovate faster.”
I don’t get it. How can someone ‘innovate‘ faster when they have a lot of money? Why don’t they move to the donations model instead of monthly subscriptions?
I personally wanted to support the developers, but then, I would have been super happy if they’d have moved to a donation oriented revenue model. But this is giving me a second thought. For now, I’m sticking onto the free version of Feedly.