It's been another busy month at Magic Pages. In February, I launched new subscription-based prices, moved the customer portal inside Ghost, and relaunched the look & feel of Magic Pages.
Quite some things, hm? Well, I haven't stopped. Things keep moving, and I have some interesting bits and pieces for you today.
🌴 Limited Support Availability
Let's start with the bitter pill. I am going on holiday. Not just for a little weekend trip, but…a full-blown 2-week trip to Sri Lanka. I am incredibly excited about this, yet it will also mean that support availability in the end of March and beginning of April will be limited.
But don't worry. I won't leave your email or chat message unread for two weeks. I will still check in every day to make sure things are running smoothly. The response time might drop from 1–2 hours to well…a few more hours.
Until our flight next week, I am also working on a list of issues I wanted to get fixed before I leave. That includes some performance-related stuff, bug fixes, and new features. So far, it looks like everything will get done. Woohoo 🙌
🚀 New Starter Plan
Over the past weeks I talked with quite a few of you about Magic Pages' pricing. It was clear that I needed a subscription plan next to the existing lifetime plan. But after many, many conversations, I noticed a pattern:
Many people who considered Magic Pages did not want to send 10,000 emails. They just wanted a simple blog. Maybe send an occasional newsletter.
So, why crack a nut with a sledgehammer?
To support these users with a truly managed Ghost hosting solution for an affordable price, I created the Magic Pages Starter plan. It starts at $4.00 / month, includes 2,000 emails every month, but does not have access to custom themes and the Magic Pages content delivery network.
It's a great opportunity to just get started. If the publication takes off, an upgrade to the old (but newly named) Pro plan is always possible.
Both the Starter and Pro plan are available as monthly ($4/$12) and yearly ($40/$120) subscriptions, as well as a lifetime offer ($120/$349).
🧰 Many Small Changes
Apart from this quite visible change, I have worked on loads of small bug fixes, features, and iterations. From improvements to the content delivery network, fixing some issues with the customer portal, or contributing to open source projects that power Ghost and Magic Pages.
The goal is to "stabalize" the changes that happened at Magic Pages recently, to prepare for a bigger marketing push in April and May.
👻 What has happened on Ghost's side?
Last, but not least, let's have a quick look at what has happened with Ghost CMS in the last few weeks.
There has been one minor release (v5.80.0) since last month's update, and quite a few patch releases (which generally just include bug fixes).
Here are some of the highlights:
- 🎨 The name of the free tier can now be changed. If you're running a newsletter and have a paid and a free tier, this might come in handy. You're no longer stuck with "Free", but can name it anything you want.
- ✨ Comments are now lazy-loading. This doesn't sound too exciting, but it means some pretty nice improvements in terms of page speed.
- 🐛 Lots and lots of bug fixes 🎉
So, another month – another update. Thank you for reading! And as always, let me know if there's anything I can help you with.
Jannis