Updated 08/28/24: The naming convention for encoding tiers has changed. Encoding tiers is now video quality levels, baseline is now basic, and smart is now plus. Learn more
If you’ve been hanging with Mux for a while, then you know we don’t change our pricing plans very frequently. Sure, we’ve iterated a lot on pricing, but not necessarily plans.
We’ve had two plans for Mux Video for quite a while: Pay as you go, which is a usage-based plan, and Custom, meant for enterprise and scaling companies. We work hard to make sure that new features and capabilities fold into our existing plan structure as seamlessly as possible so that all of our customers benefit.
We want to win with our customers, which means working hard to make sure our incentives are aligned. That’s one of the reasons we continue to price in minutes. If you’re curious about our minute-based pricing model (and its history), make sure you check out Steve’s blog post, “Why we [still] price in minutes for video”.
And while our approach to value hasn’t changed, as a team we’ve been talking about and working toward solving the problem Jon outlined in his recent blog post — video is too expensive.
Over the last year, we’ve introduced different pricing levers that can be used to modulate costs and give you the flexibility to build video to suit your use case and business model. We added resolution-based pricing, baseline encoding, and (one of my personal favorites) Automatic Cold Storage.
Each of these pricing levers gives you the ability to make smart pricing decisions while you’re building video. Even so, we knew we had to take it up a notch and consider how we could address the expense of video before the building even begins.
Today, we’re still doing just that, and taking it a step further - I’m thrilled to announce our new pricing plan — Starter!
How Starter works
Simply put, for $10 a month we’ll give you $100 worth of usage for that month. If you need more than $100 of usage, never fear, it will seamlessly transition to pay as you go rates (see the details here).
It really is that simple. No new gated features or usage limits. Just more for your money.
And while a credit card is required to activate the plan, you can still play around with test assets for free until you’re ready to dive in.
Heck, if you aren’t sure you even want to pay the $10, start on Pay as you go! You can change plans at any time. That’s really the whole point - sensible plans that support your budget’s needs.
Build fearlessly
Starter is designed to support intrigue and growth. We wanted to give our customers a lot of Mux for not a lot of money to get the ball rolling and start scaling their use of video.
Starter may be for you if you are a:
- Solo developer who wants to manage how much you are spending on a side project.
- Product manager tinkering with video and figuring out how to fold it into your product, looking for the next radical opportunity to push your strategy forward.
- Team of startup developers who are starting to scale your use of video.
- Customer primarily using baseline assets since the free encoding makes a great pair with Starter.
- Pay as you go customer looking to save $90 a month
No matter your use case, you should be able to build fearlessly.
We aren’t pulling the plan-rug out from under you
We aren’t changing our Pay as you go plan or automatically moving you onto Starter — simply adding a new plan that may serve your needs better!
Here’s a pro-tip, though. Take a look at your bill, and if it’s more than $10 and less than $100, I’d suggest looking at Starter! Put those freed-up dollars towards another pet project or bank them for your inevitable growth.
What does Mux get out of this?
It doesn’t take an MBA to know that, generally speaking, a plan that provides 10x the value for the cost is a weird business proposition.
We have a theory that the cost of video stops developers from even trying ideas, and it’s holding the ecosystem back. We want to see startups trying new/fun/weird things with video, so we decided to put our money where our mouth is and invest in it. Obviously, our hope is that some of those ideas succeed and we can grow and scale together.
As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Now, go forth and conquer video!
