Pricing Update, and a Fun Graph

January 30 2010, 12:29 PM

I take pride in Gridshout's simple pricing model: 1 Linden per member per month.  But I realize that price can be prohibitively expensive for large groups.  So today I'm announcing a slight tweak to the Gridshout pricing policy.  As of right now, the max price for groups with 5000 members or more is 5000 Lindens.  So if you have a group with a lot of members, you don't need to be afraid of escalating costs as your group gets bigger and bigger.

For groups of less than 5000 members, Gridshout pricing remains unchanged: 1 Linden per member per month.

If you've been considering making the switch but weren't sure how Gridshout's costs compared to those of other group systems, I've made a neat graph!

The X axis shows the number of people in a group, and the Y axis shows how much Gridshout, Subscribe O Matic, and Hippo Groups would charge per month for a group of that size (as of Jan 30, 2010).  Some interesting things to note:

  1. Subscribe O Matic is cheapest at first, but that first step is a doozy!  With Subscribe O Matic, your 501st member explodes your monthly cost from 0 all the way up to 1990.  That's the problem with a tiered pricing scheme: nasty surprises when you cross from one bracket to the next.  At that rate, you're paying 3.97 Lindens per member, almost four times the cost of a Gridshout group of the same size.
  2. Gridshout costs less than Hippo for groups of 1000 members or less, but Hippo then gets relatively cheaper.  Be aware though, that Hippo imposes a variety of other caps, such as the max number of messages you can send each month and the max number of groups you can create.
  3. Your first Gridshout group gets a bonus of 100 free members.  This applies no matter how big your group gets, so if your first group grows to 4000 members, it will only be billed for 3900.  Those savings add up over time.
  4. There is a one-time charge at registration if you want a short domain name for your Gridshout site.  See Pricing for details.
Of course, there's a lot more that sets Gridshout apart, like getting your own customizable website with blog posts and static pages, all of which can be sent to your members inworld, and all of which can have inworld items attached to them.  You really have to try it to get the awesomeness.

Joinboard 1.01

January 24 2010, 11:38 PM

This update to the Join Board script contains two improvements:

  1. Support to use a script updater for future join board updates (instead of having to rez a new copy).
  2. If your group gets behind on payments, the join board will now give would-be members a helpful message when they try to join instead of failing silently.

Attachment: Gridshout Join Board-1.01

Using Images

January 13 2010, 1:21 PM

Did you know that Gridshout lets you upload your own images to use in your posts and pages, or even as your site logo?  To learn how to do this, go to the Images page at gridshout.com

Hot New Features

January 05 2010, 6:30 PM

I've made several improvements lately and thought I'd let all group owners know what they are.

  • You no longer need to touch an inworld Terminal to sign up for a Gridshout account.  You can do everything from the web.  The inworld method still works fine though.
  • You can now log into Gridshout using your regular Second Life® name, instead of having to convert it to a Gridshout username by trading spaces for underscores and making it lowercase.  Yay for simplicity!
  • All non-private groups now have a big "Join Group" button at the top of the sidebar (only non-members see it).  Now your readers will better understand what they need to do to send your sexy posts and pages to themselves inworld.
In the somewhat-near future, I'm hoping to add the following:
  • Image uploads from inside the post editor.
  • Custom color schemes.
If you have other suggestions, please let me know.
--Schmo

1.02 Redux

January 02 2010, 1:19 AM

I just realized that I didn't attach the sitebox updater to the post from a few days ago.  If your sitebox is more than two days old, use this updater on it.

Attachment: Sitebox Updater-1.02