Several of you have asked about pricing for version 2 of Gimlet. We’re ready to announce that Gimlet v2 will have not just one new price, but three…

Gimlet v2 Pricing Tiers

• Gimlet Basic ($29/month + $10/month per additional branch)
• Gimlet Premium ($79/month + $10/month per additional branch)
• Gimlet Max ($349/month, no charge for additional branches)

As a way to say thank you, our current clients will get special pricing; see below for details.

These new prices go into effect on February 1, 2019. If you’ve paid annually for Gimlet v1, we’re extending access to Gimlet v2 service until your next renewal date at no additional charge. Clients with Basic service may request a prorated invoice to upgrade to Premium service at any time. We’ll be in touch with account administrators soon via email to notify everyone of these pricing details.

Gimlet Basic

At our Basic tier, we offer the tried-and-true feature set of Gimlet v1, with the updated user interface of Gimlet v2. Recording questions, running reports, and search will all feel familiar.

Gimlet Premium

The Premium tier adds new reporting options — currently, our new Time and Pivot reports. In addition, Premium adds faceting and full-text search to both search and reports, to let you explore more deeply into your data, and let you see reports on a subset of your data, all alongside the actual questions that make up those reports.

The Gimlet Premium tier is the set of features our Gimlet v2 “preview” has provided. Gimlet Premium is also where we plan to do the bulk of our new development for upcoming features, including: mobile and tablet interfaces, a new mobile-optimized “speed entry” feature, and more to come…

Gimlet Max

At the Max tier, we offer our clients business services that will need ongoing support from Gimlet staff. Do you need to negotiate a custom Terms of Use? Would you like us to do (and support) custom work to integrate Gimlet with your local authentication mechanisms? Are you looking for live online training or consulting? This tier is for you. (Additional charges may apply for large amounts of work.)

Special Pricing for Current Clients

As a way to offer thanks to our current clients for your years of support, we’re offering all the features of Gimlet Premium for the price of Gimlet Basic. You’ll pay just $29/month plus $10 each additional branch. This isn’t a limited-time, one-year-only deal — it’s your price going forward.

Why Tiers?

Over the years, Gimlet has found a home in a far more diverse set of libraries than we ever expected. From booming public and academic systems to volunteer-run libraries in rural communities, Gimlet helps libraries of all kinds show their worth. But, one size does not fit all. On one hand, we want to add features tailored to busy service points without complicating things for smaller clients. On the other end, we want to support clients who need enterprise business practices such as contract negotiations and custom integration work.

Our Background

We don’t take pricing changes lightly. Gimlet isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme for us; we’ve been in business for nearly ten years and expect to be around at least that many more. Our current prices have been in effect since 2014; this will be the second time we’ve raised prices, ever.

So why are we raising our prices? In short: Gimlet has grown into a full-time job, and it’s time to devote full-time work to it.

When we first launched Gimlet, we hoped for eventual financial success, but — much more realistically — we hoped to not lose money building something to help libraries, while relying on full-time “real jobs” for our primary income. As we went from a few clients to a few dozen, that worked great.

Almost a decade later, we’ve grown from those first few clients to more than seven hundred, spanning the globe. And as you might imagine, running the company, managing customer support, and keeping your data safe and secure takes a lot more energy than it used to. Running Gimlet has always involved us working in our spare time, while working an extra job or two to help keep our modest Midwestern families clothed and fed. The major challenge we face today is that we can’t pay for enough of our time to work on Gimlet.

Gimlet’s future success needs more of our time and energy; this price increase will go entirely towards buying that time to work directly on the product. This price increase marks a turning point for the company: Afterwards, Eric will be Gimlet’s first full time staff member.

Financial Assistance

Just as every client is not created equal, we realize not all budgets are flexible, too. If these new pricing tiers are not a good match for your needs or your budget, please let us know. We want everyone to pay a fair price for what they need, so get in touch with us to provide feedback, or to request special consideration. We promise to respect your needs and continue to provide you the very best service we can.

Thank You

I hope this post helps everyone understand the pricing change is a move towards a long-term future of continued stability and features to give you new and better ways to save your staff time and gather better data about your services. The more time we can spend on Gimlet, the better Gimlet can be.

Lastly, we want to send a huge thank-you to all of our clients for their years of business with us. We’re here because of you and we love this work. With your continued support, Gimlet has a great future for all of us.

Sincerly,

– Eric & Nate

Background photo credit: Abby Lanes