HitTail Power Play?

by tyler on 06/29/2007

I love HitTail. It is a fantastic SEO tool and the best part….it is free. If you dont know what HitTail is, it is a web based program that will tell you which search terms lead to your site and keep track of the long tail for you. It also has a live section that will show you which websites lead a user to your site (it updates live as a link it clicked that lands on your site).

The free version is limited to 100,000 visits per month. So, conventional thinking would lead you to believe that once you hit that limit, HitTail would stop tracking for the rest of that month and restart next month….oh no. If you hit the limit you either have to upgrade to the $50 a month package or they will end the use of the service for you. Here is an email I got from them today:

“You are among our customers whose traffic volume exceeds the limit for free service, which is 100,000 visits per month. Therefore, we kindly ask you to pick a premium plan for high-volume sites and upgrade your site or to remove the tracking code from your site.

Your visits per month number can be seen on your “My Account” page. To upgrade, login, go to “My Account” page and click the “Upgrade” link.

The price for high-volume plans starts at $49.95 per month/$499.95 per year. See more details on our pricing page http://www.hittail.com/pricing/

Please consider upgrading soon, otherwise we’ll have to stop collecting the data for your free account.”

I think it is kind of a dick move but it worked, I rely on the service so I am upgrading…..#@%$

There are 5 comments in this article:

  1. 29/06/2007Ryan 'Dravis' Knowles says:

    Wow! I’m very surprised they decided to play it that way. I’m in agreement with you, why not just stop tracking after 100,000 visits?

    I wonder why I haven’t received this email yet… We use Hittail on PlugIM and we cleared 100,000 visits this month. Strange…

  2. 29/06/2007Mike Levin says:

    Sorry! We don’t intend to be dicks. We’re looking at how to do this as graceful as possible.

  3. 30/06/2007Mike Levin says:

    I sent that last message from my phone to make sure we responded quickly. But the truth is, we keep everything running as well as we can for as long as we can until the few heavy free users start cutting back service for the majority of users. Only then do we cut back in tiny bits. Also, we don’t shut off after 100,000 visits. It’s 100,000 search hits — a MUCH bigger number, and one that has been repeatedly called a generous level. Say you had only half your traffic from search, and an average 5 page-views from each visitor. In total, that situation would be 1 million hits, and you’re still barely over the limit of FREE HitTail. Not bad, huh?

  4. 2/07/2007The Hustle says:

    Mr. Levin,
    The email that was sent said 100,000 visits per month (not search hits), that is why I referenced it above.
    Again, we love the application but threatening to turn off a free service if someone does not pay for it cant be the most effective route.
    We did sign up for a subscription even though we were strong armed ;)

  5. 5/07/2007Mike Levin says:

    I’ll let our team know that we need better language to differentiate between 100,000 “hits” and 100,000 “search hits”. The later is much more generous, and for our audience who we sometimes unavoidably have to “turn off”. Also, we should give people regular warnings as they’re approaching that level.

    The intention is of course just to keep our servers humming along at the fastest speed for the most number of people. We value every customer, and particularly appreciate that you did sign up for a subscription service. We all here at HitTail thank you!

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