I have to agree with the sentiments regarding Kagi.
I've been primarily using Kagi search since signing up for the private beta in April. Today, without warning, I was suddenly unable to use it.
It seems that with the launch of the public beta today, I was immediately switched to the free tier and limited to 50 searches for the month! That limit was obviously reached within just a few hours.
Bear in mind that I've been using it as my primary search engine across all platforms for the past 1½ months and all of sudden my latest search result returns a request for payment..
The email I received when I was accepted to the private beta in December said, "Kagi is free during the beta, but will rely on membership in the future." More recently, an email in mid-May notified users about the specifics of the shift to a public beta and the introduction of free/premium tiers. I feel they've done a decent job keeping their users apprised of the changes.
None of the announcements or even the billing page makes mention of what the "limited free tier" offers.
They should have been explicit in saying that it was going to be limited to "X searches per month" especially since it was going to be so restrictive at 50
None of the emails or announcements provided a link to the pricing page and the link to it isn't found on either the kagi.com homepage when logged in or the billing page.
In fact this is the first time I'm seeing a link to the pricing page.
Ironically, even searching "Kagi.com pricing" on Google doesn't bring up that page. Maybe if I could still use Kagi to search for that term...
I've been primarily using Kagi search since signing up for the private beta in April. Today, without warning, I was suddenly unable to use it.
It seems that with the launch of the public beta today, I was immediately switched to the free tier and limited to 50 searches for the month! That limit was obviously reached within just a few hours.
Bear in mind that I've been using it as my primary search engine across all platforms for the past 1½ months and all of sudden my latest search result returns a request for payment..