Robert Ambrogi Blog
The practice-management platform Clio recently notified long-term customers who had been grandfathered on an older pricing plan that they will now have to switch to Clio’s current pricing plan.
The grandfathering came about in February 2015, when Clio adopted a three-tiered monthly subscription plan in place of its prior single-price plan. (See: Practice-Management Platform Clio Converts to Three-Tiered Pricing.) When it did so, it offered existing customers the option of being grandfathered into their existing features and pricing.
Those existing customers had been paying $49 per user per month, the price Clio had charged since its launch in 2008. (Some were paying even less, thanks to discounts through bar associations.) The three-tiered plan is $39, $59 or $99 a month if paid annually and $49, $69 or $109 if paid monthly, depending on features. (These plans also qualify for bar discounts.)
But those legacy customers had received no feature updates in the years since, apart from essential security and compatibility updates, and Clio decided it was important to bring them in line with its other customers.
“We feel it is important that all of our customers have equal access and opportunity to the features and functionality that Clio offers today, such as an Outlook 365 integration, Clio Payments, and Evergreen Management,” Sasha Perrin, corporate communications manager, told me.
Perrin said that the grandfathered customers were being transitioned to the middle-tier Boutique plan because it most closely reflects the discontinued plan in features and functionality, while also adding features. However, customers are free to choose any plan, she said.
One customer told me that he was annoyed by how Clio handled the increase, “announcing that my bill was going up roughly 35% and acting like they were doing me a favor.” But after he reached out to Clio, they gave him a further discount off the Boutique price, so that his overall increase was small.
Perrin said Clio gave customers advance notice of two billing cycles (roughly 60 days) if they were on monthly plans or a minimum of 60 days if they were on annual plans. “We communicated the transition to customers in a multitude of ways, including email, in-app notifications, and various support channels,” she said.