Tell Hacker News: Pipl.com Silently adds a $500 monthly minimum for API Use

5 points by zeronight 3 years ago | 1 comment

I got email from Pipl support to re-check my use case and ensure it is inline with their acceptable use policy [1], after explaining what I used the product for they dropped this in the same email thread with no other context.

>Thank you for providing that information! I do want to advise that there is now a $500 monthly minimum in place for all of our API customers. If you do not perform the required number of queries each month to bring you to the $500 threshold, you will still be charged the full $500. If you are okay with this, we can accept a written consent over email and I will have our billing team put that minimum in place so you can continue to use our API.

They used to have no minimum and you would be billed per use monthly. It looks like they have removed all mention of pricing from there website as well. You can see other sites have captured the price [2].

I have no problem with a minimum for a service like this, but $0 to $500 per month is outlandish.

[1] https://pipl.com/resources/privacy-documents/pipl-permissible-use

[2] https://www.saasworthy.com/product/pipl/pricing

1123581321 3 years ago |

How much would you have spent per month without the minimum? If you’re going from $50-200 to $500 per month, that’s a significant hike. If you were spending $0-20, then they’ve decided to have different kinds of customers and I don’t think they are actually trying to get you to spend that much. It would’ve been nice to have been communicated that more nicely, of course.