A Newsletter and a Sale

By Ewelina Barczuk 2012-01-16, 19:00

For posterity, we are republishing here the text of our first ever newsletter, sent to (almost) all of our current users. The newsletter was composed and mailed using MailChimp, which did a fine job.

This is what we wrote...

The First Ever PageKite Newsletter

Gleðilegt Nýtt Ár! Happy New Year!

We know this brand new year is more than two weeks old now. We have kept quite busy so far: we removed the Christmas tree and all the decorations from our office, except for some colourful lights in the windows - after all, it's still dark here in Iceland. We ate all the ginger cookies, bought a fancy MacBook Air for one lucky employee, worked on our software, played Scrabble a few times, and then we paniced... Somehow we had forgotten to send our friends New Year's wishes! Oops!

Well, after many long hours ruminating, we decided that late is probably still better than never, which is why we would now like to wish you ALL THE BEST IN WHAT'S LEFT OF 2012! Happy New Year! We wish you luck keeping all your New Year's resolutions, if you made any, and if you didn't - that you will enjoy a nice and peaceful year. :)

-- The PageKite team

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But... that's not all we have to say.

We realize that some of you may have signed up for PageKite many months ago, when our software was brand new and relatively hard to use. Well, we have made lots of progress and it is definitely worth taking another look. :) PageKite version 0.4.6, released just last night, is our most powerful and user-friendly release to date. It allows you to bring a website or folder on-line with just one quick command. You can download it from pagekite.net/downloads/.

If you are curious about other progress we have made, this blog post discusses last year's highlights for our little startup: pagekite.net/2011-12-31/Highlights_of_2011

Also, we are having a sale! Our first sale ever, to celebrate the beginning of our second year of service.

You will get 20 % OFF every quota refill bought before Valentine's Day. Yes, the sale ends at midnight on the 13th of February (GMT). :) Soon afterwards a new pricing scheme will come to life, which you can read about below.

So what do we have planned for 2012?

First of all, we plan to release Pagekite.py 0.5. This version of our software will include a graphical user interface, desktop integration, simple sharing of files and images and better support for our Windows and Mac OS X users. Fans of the current command-line version needn't worry though, it isn't going anywhere and will be fully functional in version 0.5 as before.

In February we will launch a new pricing scheme. The biggest change will be phasing out of bandwidth-based pricing and a move to a more predictable monthly subscription model. We will still offer pay-as-you-go style options and will be adding group subscription options to better support software development teams. If changes like this make you nervous, you still have plenty of time to go take advantage of our sale... :)

Later this year, we will release a C-language version of the PageKite back-end, for embedded devices too memory constrained to run our Python code.

Finally, we are preparing a "white-label" version of the pagekite.net service for partners who would like to embed our technology into their own products or offer PageKite services to their customers, using their own domains and branding.

It is definitely going to be a busy year.

So please stay tuned and check the blog at pagekite.net/Blog as often as you can!

Warm greetings from cold and dark Iceland,

Ewelina Barczuk
Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson
Már Örlygsson