Pricing Updates Taking Effect On August 1st, 2023
Dear Valued EstateSales.org Customer,
Since founding the company in 2009, we’ve been one of a few leading websites to offer estate sale companies a dedicated, nationwide platform on which to build their business with best-in-class online marketing, lead generation, and sales tools. In 2017, we were the first estate sale listing site to launch an online marketplace and auction platform that allowed local estate sale companies to conduct timed sales and auctions that competed with large corporations. Today, the estate sale industry is thriving with success stories of companies such as yours.
Recently, our primary competitor was purchased by a publicly held, European-based corporation. This leaves us with the distinction of being the largest privately held, American-owned estate sale listing site. When we started out in 2009, we were just a tiny sliver of our competitor’s size, and today we’re hot on their heels, having sold more online items through our online sale platform than they have, according to a recent press release.
Almost overnight and predictably, we heard that our competition drastically increased their prices and outsourced customer support overseas. They’re doing this because they believe that you as an estate sale company have no choice in the matter. We believe that it’s incredibly important for the estate sale industry as a whole to have choices when it comes to the venues you use for marketing your sales, and we hope that you will help support that choice through your business.
In order to help us provide you with a better product that is continually delivering new value, we’re announcing some adjustments to our pricing. I know that pricing increases are rarely something that is good news to you as a customer, but I hope that you will consider the following:
- We’ve more than doubled our traffic and buyer database, as well as added many new features to the site while keeping prices the same for the past five years. In the meantime, inflation has increased over 23% during the same period.
- These updates will allow us to better compensate our staff as well as hire additional staff so that we can add new features at a faster pace and offer quality customer support, all based in the USA.
- These updates will allow us to reduce our dependence on external “Google Ads” that are visible on the site for users who aren’t logged in. In the past, these ads have produced a significant amount of revenue for us and this has allowed us to grow, but at the same time they’re intrusive and have diluted the attractiveness and focus of our site. For a long time, we’ve wanted to get rid of the ads, and these pricing changes will allow us to significantly reduce the amount of ads we have on the site.
- These updates will allow us to invest in our technical infrastructure and improve the website’s performance and load times.
In terms of future features and recent additions to the site, we’re excited to let you know about a slew of major additions coming to the site, some of which include:
- A mobile app for buyers and sellers (the seller app is currently in private beta for iOS users)
- A new price research tool allowing you to search a growing database of over 643,000+ sold items from estate sales.
- A new shops feature which allows you to sell items in a stand-alone store at fixed prices
- New SMS text message based marketing options
- The ability to create and apply custom designs to your HTML emails
- The acquisition of a leading online antiques marketplace (announcement coming soon) as a new channel to cross promote sales and items which fall into the antiques category
So, what specifically are the pricing changes? For all existing customers, you will NOT be paying the new plan prices, however, your plan rates will increase slightly as follows:
- Gold plan pricing will go from $34.99/mo to $39.99/mo
- Platinum plan pricing will go from $49.99/mo to $59.99/mo
- Elite plan pricing will go from $99.99/mo to $119.99/mo
Rates for new members who are not an existing customer moving forward and will be:
- Gold plan $49.99/mo
- Platinum plan $99.99/mo
- Elite plan $149.99/mo
This means that while your pricing will be increasing by an average of about $10/mo, you will be saving over 25% vs the new pricing for as long as you remain a paying member of the site. Commission rates for all online auctions and sales will remain unchanged. These new prices will go into effect starting on all billing dates that fall on or after August 1st, 2023.
Also, due to increasing demand, effective on August 1st, we’ll be updating our pricing for individual sales and sale upgrades. These changes are:
- Pay-per-sale listings (only applicable to Basic plan members) will go from $39.50 to $50 each
- Extra local upgrades will go from $5 to $10 each
- Regional upgrades will go from $15 to $20 each
- National upgrades will go from $30 to $50 each
- A 10% placement fee for all Facebook Boost upgrades
To help with these changes, we will also be implementing a reward points system that can be applied as a discount towards future upgrades.
As a convenience, you can review and manage your plan level at any time by visiting your Subscription management page under Account Settings.
If these new changes represent a hardship for you/your company, please let me know. One of the things that make us stand out is that we aren’t run by a big corporation and reasonable people are still in charge. Feel free to reach out to me directly at mike@estatesales.org or book 15 minutes on my calendar.
Proudly American,
Michael Judkins
Founder & CEO, EstateSales.org
