Why you don’t need to Pay $59.95 per year for Plaxo Premium, if you want to? In my opinion most of the services provided by Plaxo premium are available for FREE. Today I am doing a small analysis why you may choose not to upgrade to the premium service and save yourself at least $47.95 per year.
Today I received an email from Plaxo team (a part is copied below), asking me to upgrade to Plaxo Premium.
Outlook sync will become part of Plaxo Premium effective July 30, 2009. This change will allow us to continue to invest in the development and support of this valuable (but high-cost) feature. In order to continue syncing your Outlook address book and calendar via Plaxo, you’ll need to upgrade to Plaxo Premium.
If you act before July 30, you can lock in a 20% lifetime discount on Plaxo Premium. You’ll get Plaxo Premium for $47.95/year, a $12.00/year savings off the regular $59.95 annual subscription price. In addition, you can try Premium, risk-free, for 30 days.
But I thought, does it really make sense to upgrade. Below are the finding of my small analysis. I am taking each service provided by Premium separately to see if I have better options. Then you can yourself decide:
- Syncs with your Outlook and Outlook Express: If Plaxo already syncs my contacts with Google and Yahoo, then I can chose to sync my Google contacts with Outlook using Google Sync. Moreover, Google Sync lets me sync my contacts with iPhone too. [No Reason to upgrade.]
- Syncs with your Windows Mobile phone: Why just Windows Mobile? Same analysis as above, Google sync lets me sync my contacts with any phone – iPhone, Blackberry, Palm and obviously Windows Mobile. [No Reason to upgrade.]
- Removes duplicate contact and calendar events: If you use Windows Live Hotmail, then the feature to remove duplicate contacts is already there. I am not so sure about Google but I hope this feature should be there too. Now removing duplicate calendar events wouldn’t be that tough too. [No Reason to upgrade at least not for just calendar events.]
- Automated backup and recovery for your address book: Any email program like Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo etc. already do that. Then why pay $59.95 to Plaxo. [No Reason to upgrade.]
- Send unlimited Premium eCards: May be you can send Premium eCards, but for that you may chose to use specialized eCard services like eVite, myPunchBowl etc. These services provide far more customization options and are generally available at a much cheaper price. Otherwise Free eCards are also not bad. Check out myPunchBowl to see really cool cards. [No Reason to upgrade.]
- 24/7 VIP phone and e-mail support: Do I need 24/7 VIP phone and email support just for my contacts? At least I don’t need it. However, when I am using Free services then there is no point considering this point as well. [No Reason to upgrade.]
- One-on-one remote live assistance: Same as above. [No Reason to upgrade.]
- Store more than 1,000 contacts: First of all, I am sure I am not gonna have more than 1000 contacts. Even if I do, I can manage them very well in Outlook itself and I think Google also doesn’t put any limit on how many contacts you may have on your account. Currently I have over 500 contacts in my Gmail account…and counting. [No Reason to upgrade.]
So in fact, there is no point in paying $47.95 or $59.95 per year depending on when you chose to upgrade to Plaxo Premium. I think I will pass on that upgrade and will save that money for something better. But that’s just me.
What do you think? Do you think this analysis makes sense and gives you enough arguments not to upgrade? I would love to know your views about it. Drop in your response in comments to let me know what you think about it.
Reviews: Plaxo, eVite, MyPunchBowl
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wish i’d found your post before I signed up – to be honest, I have yet to find ANY contacts/calendar sync that works. All of it seems the devil’s work and then you have to pay for it. Google might seem like a good option, but even that has its failings. But at least it’s free.
Yep, plus service offers no value
RT @kairoer: What is the value of using Plaxo.com these days? >>> May be this is of use: http://ow.ly/17euj
Plaxo is now a whopping $20 – $250 PER MONTH. After reading their website I have not idea why they think their service is worth that much. I’m deleting my stuff from there too and uninstalling the app.
I totally agree with you. Plaxo changed its terms of service in mid-2009 without even warning. To be fair they then seem to have delayed the change until october, when they sent an e-mail warning. But the end result was the same.
The ONLY valuable thing about Plaxo for me was the ability to sync with Outlook and other people’s data.
I will NOT change to Plaxo Premium until I am sure that MOST of my contacts have also changed. What’s the point of upgrading if your contacts don’t also upgrade? You will only get to PAY for STALE data!!!
However, if my contacts think the same way, I am sure they are also waiting for me to upgrade. So I guess none of us will upgrade. Ever.
So maybe it’s “goodbye Plaxo” and “welcome LinkedIn” for now.
Oh, and, by the way, I have decided to ERASE my contact database from Plaxo. Just in case…
I am not quite sure when you drafted this but I hope that it gets more exposure. Plaxo has basically hijacked everyone’s contact list who signed up with the service in it’s old days. It looks like the google/yahoo/hotmail etc importers are a one way ticket.
In essence you have to pay to get your data back instead of being a really great tool to synchronize your contacts across multiple machines etc.
RT @technomania Knowliz: Why NOT to Pay $59.95 for Plaxo Premium? #fb http://su.pr/1raNyS
New Post : Why NOT to Pay $59.95 for Plaxo Premium? http://bit.ly/3Hl9vE
@adampash Why Not to upgrade to Plaxo Premium? – @kevinpurdy http://bit.ly/152OAK Tip from Knowliz