Upcoming Changes to Podio Free - 2019
There have been further updates to Podio Free in 2022. Check out details here.
At the end of 2017 we stood at 750 million items created and today we have crossed a new big milestone to reach 1 billion items created - this is 1 billion projects, deliverables, clients, tickets and so much more. Thank you for your support in this amazing journey.
While we are glad to be creating value for customers, our product usage is scaling aggressively and it demands better performance optimization, which is a good problem to have.
In 2018 we focused on enhancing stability and scalability for Podio and we had to let go of many feature enhancements in lieu of that. On the same lines, we are now introducing a limit on the number of items that can be created in an organization on free plan. This way we would be able to create more value for our customers who are paying for their subscriptions.
New Item Limit Policy
An organization (org) on a free plan, can create up to 500 items in total, across its workspaces and apps. Once an organization reaches the 500 item limit, it will need to upgrade to any one of the paid plans or else it will enter the edit-only mode and eventually get locked. Please note here, if a user has both paid and free organizations and he crosses the 500 item limit for the free org, then his access will only be locked for the free org and there would be no impact on the paid org.
The existing free and paid features will remain the same.
What happens to the existing free organizations that already have more than 500 items?
We are providing all existing organizations a 30 days notice before we release the limit to them between mid-late January 2019. Organizations can use this 30 day notice period to either upgrade their plan for uninterrupted access or take backup and delete some items to come below the 500 limit. On rolling out this limit, all organizations that are above the 500 limit, will enter the edit-only mode where they can view, edit, export and delete their data but cannot create new items. They will have another 30 days in this edit-only mode to upgrade their plan before their account gets locked out.
What is the edit-only mode?
On reaching the 500 item limit for an organization, its users will have access to their data on an edit-only mode for 30 days where they can view, edit, export and delete their data but cannot create new items. It is possible to delete old items to get below the 500 item limit and thereby be able to create new items again.
What happens to the Data for a Locked Account
If an organization does not upgrade even after 30 days in the edit-only mode, then the organization account will get locked and users will lose access to their data on Podio for that organization. They will need to upgrade to paid to access data or reach out to Podio support for further assistance. As per Policy, Podio will store the data for an inactive free user account for 13 months, post which, all the data will be deleted.
Communication
We understand that right and timely communication is the key to such plan changes. So we are sending out this plan change details to all users now, giving a 30 days timeline to all organizations that are already above the 500 limit to make necessary changes to their plan before the limit gets applicable for them.
In addition to offline communication, there will also be in-app communication in the form of banners and paywall modals that would warn the user on exceeding 80% of the item limit and block creation of new item on reaching the 100% limit.
Release Plan
- New free sign-ups will get the new paywalls starting early January 2019 - Released
- Existing free organizations will get the new paywalls late January 2019 - Postponed to 4th Feb 2019
- New Item Limit further changes to 100 items for free organisations - Check details here. - Release starting 17th Oct 2022
If you have questions or concerns about the upcoming change, please reach out to our team here.
Stay tuned for more updates on when the feature goes live. We are looking forward to supporting your business in the future, and offering more value for our paid customers in 2019.
Thank you.
/Pallabi - Product Manager
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I come back from the holidays. And I find myself a major change discovered only 20 days after the official announcement
Did not they have to get emails to warn us?
30 days to "decide" are few. (obviously not for backup or upgrade).I use podium more than anything else to manage personal data. I do not use it interacting with other users. I feel very good even if the graphics are a bit old and mobile APP is worth it.
I did not take the paid version because I'm a bit short in this period and I'm happy with the limitations. Maybe someday if I earned a decent amount, I would take the paid version.
I understand that it takes money to improve .. but you are the only free service that grants a sensible use of your service.
To think that I have just advised acquaintances to use Podio because it has Italian and export in exel and you can use the free base. Opz, I will have to warn them that they will still have to pay. Pay to pay, maybe I should let him try another service.You could at least warn in January not at Christmas !! this at least you had to do it, for the rest I do not know the fate that will affect my account, since we do not know practically the first fate after 20 days.
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Hi @Barbara,
I am sorry to hear that you had a 20 day delay in discovering the announcement. We ensured to cover all modes of communication so that our users are aware of the upcoming change. An official communication has been sent out as an email on Dec 19th 2018 before holiday season and we also started with in-app messaging this week as a reminder before the roll-out is done. Please feel free to reach out to our team if needed.
//Pallabi - Podio
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I finally had a rep call me about my number of users dilemma. He said I didn't need to pay for all of them, but then also said that there is a 3 user minimum. This is not mentioned anywhere on the upgrade page. So the minimum you could possibly pay is $27/mo unless you pay annually to reduce it by a few bucks. So I DO have to pay for users I don't need. Also, if I remove users, I lose all past data that they've added according to the rep, so there's yet another catch to force me to pay. Paying for things I don't want is the Comcast cable model. Where is the value for me there? For a small single person company with thin margins, this is a huge jump from $0 to $27/mo .I'd rather pay the $24 for one user and at least get Globiflow. That would be value for my money. Paying for the same thing I've had for free for the last 2 years and then having to pay for two additional nonexistent users on top of that, is a crazy step back in value. All of this is fine for big businesses, so I have to assume that Podio is no longer interested in servicing single users or small companies. I have a ton of data in Podio and never considered migrating it elsewhere until now, and now I only have a few days left. Disappointing.
It seems like a good business practice would be to nurture your smaller users, because eventually they may become big users. Everyone starts somewhere, and goodwill creates brand loyalty. This change is very short-sighted.
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Hi Gabe,
There is no 3 user required if you upgrade online - https://help.podio.com/hc/en-us/articles/201019868-Upgrading-an-organization - you should be able to remove members from your workspace and only pay for 1 license for yourself.
I am unsure why Sales require a 3 user minimum, this might be if you need invoice or other Citrix services. There is no 3 user policy for Podio as far as I am aware.
Feel free to refer your sales rep to this conversation.
/Sara - Podio
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Again, why does it take so long to get our rep to respond to emails or return phone calls? I am trying to upgrade our account though I have to admit I am extremely hesitant right now considering the lack of communication from our rep. I need someone to contact me TODAY!! At this point it would be great if maybe even someone other than our rep could contact me.
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Dear Pallabi, I had posted a comment saying something like the following; perhaps different wording of course:
If you want to persuade current free users to become paying customers, the current communication style is a horrible way to do so. Telling potential customers to "pay up or lose access your data" is not a way to gain confidence.
Furthermore the timing is exceptionally unfortunate. You could have announced this 6 months ago and given people a genuine chance to decide how to move forward. Many of the free users are probably users that were not yet sure wether they really needed the paying service. A more careful communication and perhaps a transitional offer could have persuaded far more users to become paying customers.
It makes sense to me that you move to paying subscriptions but with this move Podio has lost a lot of confidence. I would have also considered to upgrade. Now I am doubting though.
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Pallabi, PLEASE consider making your light user role a heavily discounted price.
About 70-80% of my workspace only use Podio to read the notifications in the Employee network. I simply cannot justify paying $9/14/24 for them to participate in the workspaces because they will NEVER do any advance functions.
However, if your light users was perhaps $3 or $4 I would probably include them in a few workspaces.
That would be win-win - you'd get more users and I'd get them more involved where currently I can't justify expense.
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We are a 3-person volunteer organization without a domain name.
I'm the project manager and have used Podio extennnnnnnsively for quite a number of years. The process of extracting all of our information in such a manner that it would still be relational and equally accessible would take me a few weeks. However I have those few weeks already booked. On top of that, December and January are our busiest months. What were you THINKing around the holidays, Podio?
My two colleagues hardly use Podio, mostly following my links to resource pages when prompted. It would be handy to be able to keep them as free users although they are in most of our workspaces. I cannot justify paying for them although I can for myself. It would be nice to receive recognition as a volunteer organization, in the form of a fee waiver.
I wrote the help desk about the proposed changes on Dec 22 and was redirected to the webform. Immediately I copied & pasted my diatribe there, and to date have heard from not one person. I wrote again a few minutes ago and hope to be engaged in the start of a dialog soon. Of course sales is busy trying to explain options to folks who feel sideswiped, but one would think Podio would have anticipated our startled confusion, and ramped up the sales force ahead of time.
I'm out of the country with our typical January incredible workload, so our options must be hashed out by email instead of by phone. I don't have consistent internet and am in the field most all day. In another week all my work will be held hostage by Podio. I won't be home for another 3 weeks. Although I appreciate the offers a few folks have made of web links that can quantify my use of Podio, I haven't the time for a learning curve, and, this information should appear as a matter of convenience on each of our workspaces and in our employee network, courtesy of Podio itself.
What can you offer me, folks?
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I'm a paid user and a developer who helps others set up their podio systems. I assume by items you mean records?? if so this is quite ridiculous, considering the amount of free programs that are out there now. 500 records is not acceptable at all.
As a paid user I do not see this as a value add to me... I see this as a data retention/access concern for me. If I may choose to drop my account to free, you're telling me that I will need to delete my data or export my data. If I can just export my data without any major issues, then what I hear is: we should have just designed a quality spreadsheet that can hold thousands and thousands of records instead of use Podio?
More-over, If I don't address this within a limited timeframe I will be locked out?? I assume I would have to upgrade again just to run an export?? You can downgrade my features all you'd like, but please do not mess with my data access. I think this is an unwise move and I am unpleased with it.
I will be working with and advising my clients to begin migrating to other platforms. Many are already pushing me to migrate their organization to something that better fits their needs, but I have always promoted Podio specifically for the guaranteed access to their data. It was a prime selling point and now I've lost that leverage for you.
If you have a data storage issue - then you ought to address users who haven't accessed their data or account in quite some time or charge by data and not by users???
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Why isnt anyone answering our urgent questions on upgrading to a paid plan? time is running out and I need help deleting a user and want to pay only for myself ($9/user/month plan). This is pathetic considering you're already facing flak from your most loyal users. VERY BAD TIMING indeed.
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I submitted a ticket 27 days ago... no reply yet. I've been paying for 6 years by now for 7 persons per year. Apart from my paid organization, i have a "private" organization for me. With a meeting app that generates a lot of items (recurring "meetings" such as "don't forget to attend to your swimming lessons".). I'd like to keep that space without having to pay for it... how can i move the items in a fast way to my current paid plan organization? Thanks. cc @pallabi cc Sara Høeg
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I am a heavy user of Podio and I am like all of the other customers, puzzled by this sudden change. However, realistically speaking, and as a CEO of a company, I know how hard it is nowadays to offer a complete service for free. Besides, looking at it from Podio's team point of view, it sounds unfair that we, the users, are using a complete solution called Podio, for free, to build up a revenue stream for our company. In other words, what's in it for them? They also pay salaries, they have employees, they have their operational expenses, to get what in return? And we get angry because they charge us an understandable amount per month, to serve OUR companies to generate higher profits. I am sure that we pay more than $27 per month on parking lots or unnecessary expenses.
And Above everything, let's not forget that while we were getting money while using the free version of Podio, they were getting none. Does that sound fair to you?
That's why, I recommend to focus our requests to Podio management to what matters the most to us, which is giving us more time to do the change or providing additional features/options to facilitate it.
The rest shouldn't be an issue if we are really profiting from Podio services, unless... We are not.
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I would like to upgarde but need to get rid of extra users and don't know how to handle this. I am waiting now a week for your sales team to return. I guess the have a lot to do, but I would like to keep Podio operable and I can't to this without your help, so please hurry up.
I guess this is a common problem, as I can't remove people from my organization. Is it possible that you open up the organization management for the free plan, so I can prepare myself for the upgrade?
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Hi everyone,
I will try to address some questions - in general to make sure we review your private account, set-up and options, please let us know in Support so we can review your plan in the backend and make the right recommendations. If you don't have a follow up from our Sales team, Support should also be able to assist.
@Glenn, this is a great point and something we have addressed with the ShareFile version of Podio when you can add employees as free client users in ShareFile and Podio, they will have less capabilities than paid employees. We are considering to have a similar model for this in Podio standard version in the future where you pay for capabilities rather than company email domain.
@Karey, I will have our team look up your case and make sure we follow up today.
@Justin, thanks for sharing your concerns. You will have access to export your data after cancelling a paid plan even after downgrading to the free version. You are not able to add new data if you are above the 500 item limit unless you upgrade to paid. We plan to give you 30 days after downgrading to a free service to access and export data. This is aligned with our general data retention policy for Citrix and our other solutions like ShareFile. Earlier last year, we announced the update to only store inactive free user accounts for 13 months, after 13 months of inactivity a free account will be queued for deletion.
@Tara, I will make sure the team look up your case and follow up today!
@Gregory, we continue to sponsor students with free use of Podio - we currently sponsor thousands of student organisations and universities student accounts with free usage and will continue to do so. We do not sponsor staff, only students. If you're in a student organization, please apply for a student sponsorship here: https://podio.com/webforms/149199/4201
@Thomas, I will be in touch with you directly to assist.
@Vincenc, here is how you export data from each app - there is no download all button unfortunately: https://help.podio.com/hc/en-us/articles/201019668-Exporting-to-Excel
@Fady, thanks for your input. We'll be giving everyone more time to make necessary changes and explore options.
@Daniel, I will make sure we follow up with you in person.
@Cesar, I will make sure the team look up your case and follow up today!
We will not enforce the new item limit tomorrow on the 19th, we plan to give everyone more time and therefore the new item limit will not be in place for existing organisations before the end of January.
Pallabi will be sharing a more detailed timeframe tomorrow or early next week - so far, don't worry, you will have another 2 weeks before the changes will be enforced for existing users and organisations.
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What?! That's insane! We've used this service for free for years! I have turned many people onto it who use this to run their business either through paid or free accounts. Why are existing users not grandfathered in? This is the most incredible, robust system for databases I've ever found and now I can't even use it as one person without paying. This is disrespectful to your fan-base
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Dear All,
Please take note of the release plan update:
In order to provide our users more time to address the upcoming item limit changes to Podio Free, we have postponed its release by 2 weeks. This has currently been made LIVE only for new users signing up to Podio Free in or after January 2019. But none of our older users will be affected by this change yet.
We would start rolling out the limit to a set of older users starting 4th February 2019 and thereon, it will gradually be rolled out to all other existing users in phases throughout February 2019.
We appreciate your feedback and support!
// Pallabi - Podio
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Hi @Daniel Round,
Yes Podio is creating a function to self monitor the 500 item limit in form of a reporting page. In the meantime request all customers to please reach out to Podio support in order to get the current item count information.
We will be posting an update once the item limit reporting is enabled.
//Pallabi - Podio
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Farewell, And thank you for all the fish.
It was a good journey. We have been with you from the very beginning when your name was Hoist, and you made a huge difference for a small startup. You were curious and took chances - We became a Podio Partner and implemented Podio in many other organisations. You had an energy and a vibe that may be difficult to keep when you scale, because then came Citrix and things suddenly went sour and things got awkward. So I guess it is time for us to move on as well - after 9 years.
We wish you the best in your future endeavours.
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Dear All,
The item count information is now made available on Podio Reporting Page. This would assist users on free plans to keep track of how many items they have within the Organization so as to help keep under the 500 item limit.
Hope this helps!
//Pallabi - Podio
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Dear All,
This is to update that the item limit changes to Podio Free have been released to the first set of Podio Free users this week. We will gradually be rolling it out to other users this month in phases.
Please take note of the item count information available on your Organisation Reporting page to help keep under the 500 item limit or plan your upgrade judiciously.
Please Note: Good News!
To give our older customers more time to adjust with this plan change, the 30 day counter for the edit-only mode is not being enabled for any user right now. So you have more time to manage your data and plan for your upgrade, without losing any data. We will be giving prior update on when we plan on implementing the 30 day counter.
So, if you hit the item limit now, you enter into the edit-only mode where you can edit, delete & export items but cannot create new items. If by deleting items, your organisation gets below the 500 item limit, then you can go back to using Podio normally and create more items till it hits the 500 limit again.
//Pallabi - Podio
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Hi, just a tip, https://quivvytools.com helps more than your solution. With Quivvy, I'm being able to see quickly how many organizations, spaces, and item count per app do I have. Try it :)
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1Cesar Nunez,
Yes, Quivvytools is nice, but there is still a need for Citrix to provide the free tool for people to obtain their count.
And I do appreciate that we now have the Orgnization Reporting page. (Though I am shocked to realize that I have 20,000 items, for all of my being a little shop. But I track everything in Podio.)
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