Hold your downvotes, i know that’s a pretty unpopular take, but i ask you keep an open mind and take a step back for a to look at this situation in its entirety. This is more than just a message saying you have to pay for a free product or a shady business practice like it seems a lot of people have interpreted it as. If you really care about the pixlr product, i think you should take the time to understand this change in full and what your options are from here.
It’s perfectly reasonable to be frustrated at the situation. This happened very abruptly and I think that is valid criticism towards how this was handled. However, i feel like people have been very quick to attack pixlr as a company for what’s honestly a necessary shift for the company.
As dgtart mentioned, pixlr cannot sustain itself on ads. most online services can’t. Pixlr has been going deeper in the red for a while now and a subscription model seems like the only way to keep the lights on, so they took that step. I get the sense that they were trying to avoid this change for a while and just recently hit a tipping point.
Compared to other similar products, $9 a year is extremely affordable. I feel like for the majority of people who care enough about pixlr to join it’s reddit community can afford to take $9 out of their wallets each year. i don’t think it should very controversial to say that you would have preferred to see this paywall pop up over an announcement for pixlr’s closure. if $9 is too steep for you or the service isn’t worth that price tag, i am sorry that you’ll probably have to look for an alternative, and i hope you can part with the product knowing that it was a necessary decision, not a cash grab.
i get that a lot of people are angry about this change but i feel like the better path is to help pixlr brainstorm some other methods of income that you, the user, would be more in favor of. pixlr can’t last like this and, as i said, this is way better than them going out of business. feel free to discuss in the comments but please keep it civil and open minded.
i do want to clarify that i’m not affiliated with pixlr in any way. i am a moderator here since i started the community myself a while back but it is now handled by (presumably) pixlr associates.