Membership price

I don’t know the owner of BF. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. I’m only here because a couple years back a friend of mine showed me BF when he was devising a recipe. It’s what he uses. If he used BS, I suppose I would be using that instead. BF does what I want it to do. I think it does it well.
 
I've been brewing for just over a year now and originally stumbled across BF during my initial YouTube and Googling of anything and everything I could find about home brewing. What I found most valuable about BF is the community of helpful Brewers. It seemed that friendly advise for homebrewers questions were found here than in the other forums where people can be... well... mean. And to a person just getting into home brewing, having a welcoming dialogue vs smart-ass responses can be the difference between screw this, or hey... this is fun.

So Brewers Friend was/is my go-to place for quite sometime before I started brewing and will be as long as the forums are free.

Admittedly I use the calculators on the site and the ones I use are :

- ABV
- Brewhouse efficiency
- Yeast Pitch
- Refractometer
- Brewhouse Efficiency

All of the above can be found elsewhere and I will leave it to others to discuss if the ones on BF are better or not.

I paid for the iPhone app for the yeast Pitch calculator. (Why doesn't the annual subscription price cover that?)

So at the end of the day, I feel that the biggest value on BF is the community, and that is priceless.

I have vented my frustration about the price and value in another thread, so I won't rehash that here again, however I too will not be renewing my membership as the real value of BF has become the community. Hopefully BF won't make that part of the paid subscription.
 
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I guess I just don't understand the hullabaloo about roughly 2 bucks a month.
Don't get Starbucks for one day, and you've paid for brewers friend for 3 months
 
jmcnamara said:
I guess I just don't understand the hullabaloo about roughly 2 bucks a month.
Don't get Starbucks for one day, and you've paid for brewers friend for 3 months
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Principal of it I guess.
 
Meh, I could care less about the $. I'd do $30 easy for convenience of cloud based.
But I think the automatic recurring payments is shitty and I have no qualms stating that.
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...(please don't raise $ to 30:D)...
 
wish i had known. I would have paid the 1 time cost of beersmith. w/o any annual fees instead of signing up for 1 year
next year it will be beersmith
 
dfj said:
wish i had known. I would have paid the 1 time cost of beersmith. w/o any annual fees instead of signing up for 1 year
next year it will be beersmith
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I checked out their website real quick, and it looks like they have 1 or 2 year subscriptions too. There does seem to be a basic one for a one time cost of about $28. But, it seems like they limit the number of recipes you can store regardless of what subscription you have?
 
im good with 15 recipe's with unlimited lifetime licence at $28. Its a hobby not a business.
 
I've paid for beersmith as well. Regular and mobile. I never use it. It's biggest pitfall is that it's not cloud based, so it's machine specific. IMO, that's BF's biggest advantage. The ability to get on from anywhere and any device.
I also think beersmith is rather clunky with a fairly steep learning curve for most. Rock solid as hell though and alright once you're dialed in.

Still needs a bit of polish, but I'd choose Brewtarget over BS I think. It shows promise. Plus it's free.
http://www.brewtarget.org/

Brewers Friend for the win though.
 
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Linux ftw. not worried about learning curve, Im sure i can figure it out
 
dfj said:
Linux ftw. not worried about learning curve, Im sure i can figure it out
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I do run Brewtarget on Linux, but as far as I know it's available for windows and mac.
I've run into a few little hiccups with the software, but nothing overwhelming.
 
jeffpn said:
Wouldn’t a stated justification imply that the price increase is debatable? What would be an acceptable justification? What would be an unacceptable justification? The company already gave you your justification. They’re keeping up with the times. When I was in high school, a Big Mac value meal cost $3. Now it costs $6. Same meal. No change. And no justification for the price increase. I do not feel slighted in any way.

Companies set their prices. Consumers decide whether the price is worth paying. I don’t see where justification is owed to the consumer.
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No it would be similar to the electric company telling customers that they are raising rates due to increase maintenance or line upgrades. I have no problem with them raising rates, but an email to existing supporting members would have helped. It isn't a big rate when it's broken down per month but that adds up quickly, just like a monthly modem fees.

I still plan on sticking with BF, the program is easy to use and cloud-based. With the closest LHBS an hour away, it has paid off more than once to have access to recipes and inventory on the go. If it wasn't BF, I'd be keeping all records on paper.
 
I bought Beersmith before I found Brewers Friend and I basically never use it. The complication of trying to use it on multiple machines along with the learning cliff have me sticking with BF.
 
Hawkbox said:
I bought Beersmith before I found Brewers Friend and I basically never use it. The complication of trying to use it on multiple machines along with the learning cliff have me sticking with BF.
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Never used BS but ive herd the same thing about it pluss its membership is what around $22
 
I'm giving BS a try (trial version) because my membership here at BF is coming due and didn't really want to spend $24 every year as I only make a few beers per year. The free version doesn't give quite enough brew sessions and the paid is just a bit more than I would like to pay. Wish they had a second tier of pricing for people who only brew a few beers per year. Anyway all that said I will probably try BS for a while, but so far find BF much more to my liking and will probably be back.
 
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I'm not here for the software, but the forums. I have been a loyal Beersmith user forever and am very satisfied with it. I like BF for the laid back comradery that is lacking in most forums, but can't justify the cost for what I gain from it. I try to contribute what I can and hope that I'm not the only one that sees it as a win/win. Perhaps some day this will change. If I were using BF for it's entirety, I would definitely pay the price.
 
BOB357 said:
I'm not here for the software, but the forums. I have been a loyal Beersmith user forever and am very satisfied with it. I like BF for the laid back comradery that is lacking in most forums, but can't justify the cost for what I gain from it. I try to contribute what I can and hope that I'm not the only one that sees it as a win/win. Perhaps some day this will change. If I were using BF for it's entirety, I would definitely pay the price.
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Couldn't agree more about the forum. It's a great laid back atmosphere and not much flogging!
I love the cloud based aspect of BF, and it's made some really good advancements in the past year, and the developers are responsive to really trying to give us what we want. It's nice to see it constantly (at least trying) evolving.
The sliders were a complete nightmare imo. But now, the percentages and OG goal feature are excellent. I love that feature now!
 
I will definitely renew my membership when it comes due this year. When I originally subscribed it was $25, seemed like a small price to pay at the time. Now in hindsight the value to me in what I have learned is incalculable. I haven't even looked anywhere else to be honest.
 
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