After the recent major update to Report URI you may have noticed some changes to the free tier accounts. This post is here to explain those changes and the reasons behind them.
Limiting Free Accounts
It's 1 year and 1 day since we launched the commercial service that is Report URI after it was a free-to-use side project of mine for over 2.5 years. Since then we've made countless upgrades (1, 2) and improvements, launched Report URI JS, introduced XSS Auditor reports, launched the CSP Wizard, won Best Emerging Technology 2018 and seen insane numbers of reports through the service. On top of that, just last week, we also launched support for the Reporting API and Network Error Logging. All of these things are truly amazing and I couldn't be happier about where the service and the company are heading, but they all come at a cost too. We're heading in the right direction and whilst all indications are that we will be profitable, that doesn't put us in the best position for growth or expansion. There are so many things that I'd love to do with Report URI but we need more hands at the pump.
With these things in mind we looked at the free accounts and found a staggering 98.99% of our subscribers are on the free tier account. I had a great expectation that many users would rely on the free tier account, and that is why it's there, but when 'basically everyone' is on a free account it doesn't make for a sustainable business! This did need to change a little.
All of that said, we wanted the free accounts to remain useful, and they have. We've found a nice balance between sensible limits whilst still providing value so here they are:
Filters: Free accounts can no longer change the default filter values. This helps us to reduce inbound report volume by applying our global filters, thus reducing costs.
Collect Hosts: Free accounts can only collect reports for a maximum of 3 sites. This helps us to reduce inbound report volume by collecting for less sites.
Reports Page: When filtering on reports the 1 hour filter is disabled. If you'd like to filter reports with a higher resolution this is available on any paid plan.
Graphs Page: Only the 1 Week graph is available on free accounts. If you want to see graphs for historic data this is available on any paid plan.
I think those restrictions are fair for our free accounts and when you think that our cheapest paid plan is only $9.99 a month then it really isn't a lot to unlock all of that awesome functionality and a 5x increase in the number of reports you get! Just to show you how much we'd really appreciate you moving onto even our lowest paid plan, we're offering 10% off your first year if you upgrade from a free plan to a paid plan. As part of this change we've also implemented support for discount codes just to do this and the discount code you need is: 10_OFF_FOR_12_MONTHS (valid until 31 Jan 2019)
I'm sure we provide value to you as a user of our service and I'm hoping that value is enough for you to consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting us as we continue to grow and expand to add new features.