Overages and Additional Pricing Policy
Updated: September 10th, 2024
Bandwidth
We believe our customers should have all the resources necessary to leverage the power of Membership.io (formerly Searchie) and unlock the gems within their content and as such we’re committed to providing our members with more than enough bandwidth to meet their needs. It’s important that we are clear that these resources are not infinite, meaning we do monitor for average use and consumption. We look to and will limit extreme use as there are variable costs that we accrue based on excess consumption for each account. That said, while rare, we reserve the right to constrain accounts utilizing more resources than is considered to be “average use.”
Accounts that consume significant excess to our average amounts of bandwidth and/or repeatedly reach the bandwidth thresholds are subject to review and evaluation of bandwidth utilization. Additional fees may be associated based on the results of the evaluation.
All plans are subject to excess bandwidth limitations which are calculated based on “Average Usage” across all plans and are based on the date of account activation. Accounts that exceed bandwidth averages may experience a stoppage in video play. Once a paid account approaches its monthly bandwidth threshold, the account owner will be notified and given the option of:
- Entering into an Enterprise Contract with higher/customized bandwidth thresholds to meet individual client needs when average use limits are not sufficient.
- Paying Fee for extra bandwidth at the rate specified in the notification.
In rare circumstances, accounting for less than 1% of client accounts, where customers are continually exceeding their monthly bandwidth averages. Membership.io will alert the client to this bandwidth over utilization. Clients will be given the option to either enter an Enterprise Contract including customizable for bandwidth utilization and/or pay for overages. Membership.io will reserve the right to temporarily deactivate a customer’s account until a suitable resolution can be applied.
When we charge for Bandwidth
Membership.io’s business model is free from in-platform advertising, meaning that we do not recoup any of our costs through advertisements or anything beyond our flat subscription fee. This means that if a single user requires an exceptionally large amount of bandwidth driven by the number of viewers consuming their content, then the costs can quickly scale above what our flat subscription fees were designed to support.
We believe our customers should have all the resources necessary to leverage the power of Membership.io using their content and as such we’re committed to providing our members with more than enough bandwidth to meet theirs and their viewer’s needs. While rare, we reserve the right to constrain accounts utilizing more resources than is considered to be “average use.”
We generally try not to limit or impose additional fees for bandwidth consumption, and the vast majority of our users, over 99%, don't reach the threshold that would require us to charge them extra. For those who consistently or significantly exceed these thresholds, our goal is to charge them rates they can afford and that are lower than what they would be charged for bandwidth utilization elsewhere.
We do not target any specific content creators or account holders, this policy applies to all users equally. We believe in supporting our creator community and continue to invest in products and programs to support them. Our goal is to allow our clients to focus on their content and business rather than financial hurdles.