"How much is it?" is the question we get most, and we have answered it the same way from the start: there is no price yet. The short answer is on the pricing page. This is the long one, because the short one sounds like an excuse and isn't.
01Voice isn't charged like ordinary software
Almost all the software you use is paid per seat: so much a month per person, whether they use it a lot or barely at all. That works because the cost of someone having an account open and not touching it is effectively zero.
A voice conversation doesn't work like that. It consumes while it lasts. Every minute you talk —and every minute the agent is listening, even while you are silent— has a cost that doesn't go away. Two people on the same plan can cost ten times different depending on how they work, and neither of them is doing anything odd.
That changes the question. It isn't "what is this worth", it is "what does it cost to support someone who really uses it". And that you only learn by watching it run, not on a spreadsheet.
02A published price is a promise about your costs
When you publish a number, you are not saying "this is worth that much". You are saying "I can sustain this for that much". If you get it wrong, there are exactly two endings:
- Eat it. You absorb the difference until you can't, and then you close or you cut the product back. To the user that arrives as a feature quietly getting worse.
- Raise it. You change the terms on the people who came in before anyone else —exactly the ones who took a risk on you. There is no graceful way to do that.
Both endings are paid by whoever trusted you first. So we prefer the discomfort of having no number to the comfort of having one we can't hold to.
03What we do instead of guessing
Open access slowly and measure. Every request is read by hand, and whoever comes in gets looked after. This isn't scarcity out of a marketing handbook: with a few hundred people you see what you cannot see with none, and what you see doesn't look like what you had assumed.
There is no card involved. Right now access isn't bought: it is asked for.
04What we do promise, which is all we can promise
- The price will be published on the pricing page before anyone is charged. It won't appear inside the app one random day.
- If you are already in, it reaches you by email before anything changes.
- No surprise charges. There is no way for you to be billed for something you haven't seen first.
And one that isn't a promise but a statement of fact: there are features already marked as paid in the product and in the privacy policy, even without a number on them. We would rather it be known from the start which ones they are than have someone use them for six months and get the bad news afterwards.
05Three things to check in any voice product, not just this one
This holds whether you stay with us or not, and it is probably the most useful part of the article:
- "Unlimited" on something metered by time. If the cost runs while you talk, truly unlimited doesn't exist. Either there is a written limit, or there is a limit you will find out about when you cross it.
- Credits that expire. A monthly allowance that doesn't roll over is a price rise for anyone with uneven weeks, which is most of us.
- The price that shows up later. If the number isn't there before you put in your data, your documents and your way of working, you are seeing it once leaving has a cost.
06And the question behind it: will there be a free tier?
We are not going to answer that with a "yes" that sounds good today and falls apart in six months. What we can say is how we think about it: anything called free has to be able to sustain itself, or it isn't free, it is a countdown.
When there are terms to announce, we'll announce them. Putting a date or a model on it today would be exactly the mistake this article is about.
07Frequently asked questions
How much does Saelyx cost?
Today it has no public price and nobody is charged. Access is by invitation. When there is a price it will be published on the pricing page before anyone is charged.
Will I be charged without warning?
No. The price is published before any charge, and if you are already in it reaches you by email before anything changes.
Do I need a card to request access?
No. Right now access isn't bought: you ask, it is reviewed by hand, and you get an answer.
Are there paid features already?
There are features marked as paid —Meeting Mode and face recognition among them— even though they don't have a number yet. It is stated in the product and in the privacy policy, so nobody gets the surprise later.
When will there be a price?
We don't give a date. Giving one we can't hold to would be the same mistake as giving a number we can't hold to.