KidZui is a kid-safe browser made available in March for those willing to pay a monthly subscription fee ($5/mo to start and $10/mo thereafter).
The exclusively subscription-based model (which did include a 30-day trial) was a bit unusual since most consumer products on the web are free nowadays, at least for a base level of service. SmugMug is one company that purports to profit quite nicely from offering only paid subscriptions. Lumosity (reviewed just yesterday) is another that requires you to open your wallet after 7 days. Oh and there’s the infamous Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports as well, but few others come to mind.
For whatever reason, KidZui has decided to abandon this group and join the wider web by offering its product for free - at least for most of its functionality. Premium memberships are now only necessary for users who want to access an extended set of features, such as extra tags for content and themes for decorating pages. On the parenting side of things, the paid features include more sophisticated activity reports and email updates. These memberships have been cut in half, so it only costs $5/mo or $50/yr.
KidZui doesn’t plan to monetize the free user base through advertisements, suggesting instead that it will stick to generating revenue primarily from the paid memberships. The switch to a fremium model wasn’t in response to struggling sales, CEO Cliff Boro tells me; it was just a decision to address more of the market, more quickly. That may certainly have been the case, but even so, it suggests that free versions of products on the web truly are necessary for rapid adoption.
Also see Glubble for a free way to control children’s surfing habits in Firefox.
I saw these guys on the Today Show this morning. I’m going to have my kids check it out over the weekend. It looks cool; but no way that I’d pay for a browser.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21.....7#24962927
yeah i saw them on the today show too. my only concern is that, since it’s censored, my kids won’t be able to find the porn they’re looking for.
John. I just checked out their parent site. Parents can add whatever sites they’d like for their owne kids, so ur all set
We went this way when we launched cGeep but it is hard to balance product features between paying and free versions. You end up most of the time a) providing a too-good free version that cannibalizes your main offering (which we did) or b) creating a product that isn’t what users need.
And maintaining 2 versions is a big distraction for a bootstrapped business (and it opens the door to more bugs).
Anyway, good luck because it is a worthy cause.
If you feel like trying a product which you have to ultimately pay for
click here: http://www.cgeep.com
Reminds me of the Al Franken quote….He also calls the Internet a “terrific learning tool,” writing that his 12-year-old son was able to use it for a sixth-grade report on bestiality.
TC is my favorite blog. Very sophisticated view points.
But when it comes to ‘free’, I don’t have to read the post. It is ‘free is smart, and non-free is dumb.’ Let me know if it wasn’t.
Please update the article, the website says the software is now free!
These guys raised 9 million for a browser with a business model that was not even allowed to test properly. I just don’t get it?
Real issue #1: I have to log in and thus reveal which sites I am going to and it becomes a privacy issue. if I buy from these sites, enter credit card info, who is intercepting it? Thus I don’t trust it.
They were better off with paid model. I do not see a difference between their premium and non premium or who is even going to opt for the premium.
Issue #2 I think they failed primarily as it is a downloadable product and it blocks all other browser once you get theirs on your screen.
It was not the price, parents would pay when it comes to kids. Free does not rhyme well with parents.