I am writing about this now to give everyone plenty of notice and time to consider the changes. From 24 August, the prices of premium packages will change.
From 1 January, Elten will no longer receive any external funding, which currently covers part of its running costs. At the same time, inflation in Poland has reduced the value of money, so the current prices are no longer worth what they were when the packages were introduced.
We will remove the current division into separate premium packages and replace them with a single sponsorship package. To distinguish sponsors from members of the former Orchestra, the sponsors list will only show users who purchased the package themselves. It will not include those who activated it with a code or won it in a competition or through another Elten activity.
From 24 August, the package will cost PLN 25 per month (eur 6) or PLN 200 per year (eur 48).
The final list of premium features will be confirmed later, once I have worked out the details. The upcoming Elten release will change things around a little, and some features will probably be moved between free and premium.
Users who already have premium packages will keep them under the current terms.
#StandWithUkraine
Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.
I kindly ask that we keep this thread constructive and civil. We've all unfortunately seen how threads like these devolve into needless bashing of the platform, and distasteful and baseless attacks on pajper. Don't start it. We're not going to tolerate it.
All that I survey, I could easily destroy. From time to time, it is important to remind these small creatures of the true extent of my power.
I wonder, is forum following still gonna restricted to the premium users? (And what about translate? I feel like that should be moved to free if people want to read posts in another forum in which isn't their native language and still get an idea of what the content is about.)
I'd also like to see spell checking come to the free tier of users as well. It's a useful thing and, in my opinion, should never have been restricted to premium users.
If you add all the important features to the free version, who will buy the premium packages? In my opinion, sponsors should get something extra — we should encourage people to buy the most expensive package too, and being on a sponsor list isn't enough for a lot of people. One or two features will make a difference. For example, if transcription is paid, sponsors could have higher limits.
Zapraszam osoby posiadające piesy, lub chcące je posiadać, do dołączenia do grupy o psach przewodnikach.
Quote: we should encourage people to buy the most expensive package. Lol you advertise more than pajper yourself. Not everyone has a lot of money for basic features my guy. But you were never the one trying to be open for being convinced so I'll leave it there. Actually, I always thought the package was 60 euros, so isn't that a price decrease? Imho 48 per year isn't that terible so I guess this won't be too bad. I don't think I'll buy it myself as I see no use for me, but hey. I think it's really fair given the situation, and at least work is happening again which is great. I still think this should be spread further at least once 3.0 is out and stable, maybe that will make it more worth it on it's own. Right now I would basically pay for inclusion in a small bubble to get extra small pirks.
@5 If you don't want to discuss, maybe just write nothing. Also, maybe you don't know this, but you don't have to agree with me. Someone has to pay for the program. If you use the most expensive features a lot, where's the problem? If you don't have the money, just don't buy the most expensive package — but if you do want to spend your money here, why shouldn't we encourage people to buy it? I also don't pay for every program if I don't need it. I don't think that just because paid transcription exists and the most expensive package has higher limits, everyone would suddenly need that package. Generally, Elten should be useful for everyone in the free version, but some features have to be paid if we want to have money for the coming years. I'm not sure how much Elten costs to run, but probably at least 30 people a year have to buy or more.
Zapraszam osoby posiadające piesy, lub chcące je posiadać, do dołączenia do grupy o psach przewodnikach.
Right? For these few things I simply wouldn't pay 48 bucks, or 60 or whatever it is now. I do support the whole thing with the permanent conf channel stuff, but those small things, they're something basic. But yeah. Encourage us to buy the most expensive package, cuz right now it ain't doing it for me.
Translate doesn't need to be paid as elten translate uses the fre endpoint of the google translate system and not the paid cloud api. For spellcheck how ever I am not sure if elten is maybe using a service that they have to license, I will look this up in elten src.
Translating really doesn't need to even be a thing, we have gpt, google translate, whatever else it is outside of elten. So if it's a paid thing, let those who are lazy use it, I guess.
Actuallly i wouldn't mind if fre users got the fre endpoint and paid users maybe something like deepl translate or paid google translate api. The free endpoint really started to degrade since beginning of 2025. Some people, including me, think that google did this on purpose to get people to use the paid api.
I kinda don't know what to think about that one. The thing is the following. Yeah, technically it's a free service. But not everything a dev charges for also has to cost them money. For example, technically coding costs no money at all. How ever you must stay sustainable so you must find some middleground. How ever on the translation thing I agree. First it's one of these features that used to be free but was then made paid, which is something you should never have to resort too as a dev unless you have a feature that is now costing you money which didn't before, and second it doesn't get maintained properly, see my earlier post about the old and nowadays faulthy endpoint. But hey at least we don't have things anymore like having to be premium to be allowed to download, user created, soundthemes.
I think if the premium is gonna make sense we need to look at the sort of features platforms like Discord and Telegram offer, and try and do something similar, rather than locking basic features behind a paywall.
2000 character message limit incoming. -- (alchappers): I think if the premium is gonna make sense we need to look at the sort of features platforms like Discord and Telegram offer, and try and do something similar, rather than locking basic features behind a paywall. --
