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Every new free user keeps topping my paid team plan bill

  • 2 December 2020
  • 6 replies
  • 760 views
Y

I used to have a Free plan and created boards that are shared and in use by 30+ people, each. Everything works fine, good experience for all, love it.

I upgraded to a paid Team plan, for me and my direct team members, with the idea that each paid team member could now create more boards (well, at least more than 3) and could invite unlimited free users to collaborate.

Reality is that as soon as a new member is added (Free User that gets the link), I get a mail from Miro that my Team Size has increased and I need to pay more. In the meantime, I managed to restrict access, but 17 users sneaked in and thus my bill is exploding.

This means that you get more advantages using a Free plan (yes, only 3 boards) and unlimited number of users than using a paid plan.

Any way to fix this? So, paying for a Team Plan, but with unlimited Free users that can edit the board during a session without exploding my bill.

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Best answer by Kiron Bondale 2 December 2020, 15:08

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6 replies

Kiron Bondale
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

@Yves Vanderbeken -

You should only get charged if the users are being added with “full access”. Viewers, commenters and users added with the Anonymous Guest Editor method (https://help.miro.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012524559-Collaboration-with-Anonymous-Guest-Editors) should not be charged to your account.

Paid accounts provide a lot more features than just unlimited boards as per this Help Center article: https://help.miro.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017730373-Free-Plan

Kiron

Kiron D. Bondale, PMP, PMI-ACP, PSM II, ICP-ACC, DASSM, DAC, DAVSC, PMI-RMP
G

@Yves Vanderbeken we’re having the same issue. The workflow for this now seems really odd. In the past, these external users would have been eligible for a free account but now they get added to our team and billed as extras. 

@Kiron Bondale thanks for your response, whilst this is helpful and I agree that paid accounts offer more than just unlimited boards, I think this creates an odd imbalance as, in this scenario, the user experience seems better and closer to expectations on the free accounts rather than paid-for accounts.

I’m not sure if this is simply an oversight or if this is by design. It seems like the best options are either to have a paid-for account but only share with anonymous guests OR revert back to a free account and invite anyone. Neither of those options seems like the appropriate solution to me.

Any advice?

Greg

Kiron Bondale
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

@Greg Macoy -

The issue is not one of user experience on the part of the participants but rather a financial concern for the facilitator or their company. Unless you are looking at very basic usage of a collaboration space, the “paid up” features of Miro are pretty indispensable so either you end up going with the Anonymous Guest Editor route or paying for the additional users.

We are on a Consultant plan, billed monthly, and will raise or lower our number of paid users based on the peak daily number of users for any day of the month. 

Kiron

Kiron D. Bondale, PMP, PMI-ACP, PSM II, ICP-ACC, DASSM, DAC, DAVSC, PMI-RMP
G

Thanks @Kiron Bondale – I totally appreciate your point. I disagree somewhat that it’s not a user experience issue, as it governs user expectations for both the facilitator and the participant. A facilitator is also a user. Arguably, it also creates an offline account management and billing issue too which can result in friction. I imagine the opinion about this will probably vary depending on your own organisation’s use case. 

I think what @Yves Vanderbeken and I are suggesting is that, yes, there are instances where the very basic usage is the preference as these will be casual, basic and typically external users (who would not pay for an account) and it seems odd that the free plan would actually deliver a better user experience here. It feels like you should be able to invite guests, free users and paid team members to boards without the default scenario being that they are invited in as paying team members.

Greg

 

Robert Johnson
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

 @Greg Macoy:

In the past, these external users would have been eligible for a free account but now they get added to our team and billed as extras. 

 

While I personally have no experience with this specific downgrade path, it is my understanding that these users can be deleted from paid Team Plan team at which time they could create their own Free Plan team.

NOTE: Once they leave the team and their Miro account profile is no longer attached to any team, they may get a stuck on a screen with a spinning Miro logo (the one seen when first launching miro.com). The fix to get around this seems to be to login to one’s Miro account via a private/incognito browser window. Once back in, Miro should see that the user is no longer a part of any team and prompt them to create a new Free Plan team.

What is also important is that when a brand new user is creating their first Miro account, they should NOT join an existing team and Create a new team first. If they want to join another team later, they can.

You could also try this with one user and reach out to the support team if they run into trouble:

 

 

“there are instances where the very basic usage is the preference as these will be casual, basic and typically external users (who would not pay for an account) and it seems odd that the free plan would actually deliver a better user experience here.”

 

I have been a member of a Free Plan team for early three years and while it is convenient to be able to add people to the team free of charge, there are a number of disadvantages:

  • there are only three editable boards allowed at a time (five if you have a really old plan)
  • users cannot have private boards - so everyone on the team can see every board - and they can edit every board, unless the board owner changes the permissions so that the team can only view and then specifically adds team members at the board level with edit access.
  • There are a number of features that aren’t available on the Free Plan (timer, voting, video chat, guest editors, password protection for publicly viewable boards, hi-res board export, projects, board backup, etc.)
  • you can’t invite external, non-team members to collaborate and edit boards with you - they must be added to the team

For a very small team only needing a few editable boards at any one time and who are not collaborating with external clients/colleagues, then yes, the free plan would probably be fine.

 

“It feels like you should be able to invite guests, free users and paid team members to boards without the default scenario being that they are invited in as paying team members.”

 

When you have a paid plan, you can invite anyone to edit a board - Free Plan users, paid users, no Miro account at all. What is important is how you invite them:

And if the person accessing the board as a guest editor does have a Miro account, they can click the Star beside the board name and later come back to that board from the Starred page in their Miro dashboard:

 

 

 

Visual Thinker | Volunteer Community Moderator
G

Hi @Robert Johnson – thank you for your comprehensive response! That’s really helpful and I think that underscores why I see this as user experience issue. 

Our typical use case is that we have a small team for which we are happy to use a paid account, and that is exactly what we do. We might run a workshop session with a client, a collaborator or the general public. We think there is a benefit to those users having an account but the logistics of managing those as members of our team would be problematic and inappropriate. Our experience using the free plan was quite straightforward. Our hope using the paid account was that we could take advantage of the benefits of using paid accounts and our clients/collaborators could effectively receive the same experience they would otherwise on the free account.

It seems like our best option is currently, as you say and as I mentioned in my original comment, to allow guest access to boards and if they want to sign up for an account they can, but that’s up to them and not a part of the onboarding process.

I think, and I suspect @Yves Vanderbeken feels the same, that there is a missed opportunity here for Miro to improve the user experience and reduce barriers for onboarding new users. The scenario is currently that they either view as a guest or they come on as a paid user on our account. The free account user, existing or otherwise, seems overlooked. We came on board as free users and after seeing the value have upgraded, we have also advocated for the use of Miro boards with our clients and other connections. This is definitely a much easier sell with a free account.

Does that help to explain our expectations?

For now, we are happy to use the guest option for our collaborators, it just feels like a workaround rather than a truly great and smooth experience.

Cheers,

Greg

 

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