I’m a teacher. I’ve seen the way big companies treat teachers, and I don’t like it. We shouldn’t be getting nickle-and-dimed while trying to support our students.

And yet, I’m working on a paid pro tier for Shuffle Buddy. Why?

Why not make everything free?

I would love to make all Shuffle Buddy features free for everyone. There are two reasons why I’m not doing that:

1. Some features cost money to run.

Shuffle Buddy has gone a bit viral. I love the fact that so many teachers are benefitting from the tool, but highly-requested features like sync cost money to operate. With so much traffic, I can’t afford to run them at a loss.

2. I need a supplemental income.

My fiancée and I are both teachers. We love what we do, but two teacher incomes isn’t always enough. We have been very fortunate so far, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. But we are not yet on track to comfortably support a family with children. Someday I hope to send a kid to soccer practice without any worries, and one more supplemental income (hopefully Shuffle Buddy) would be enough to make that possible.

We aren’t trying to get rich, but we do want to be stable.

My Principles

I need to make a bit of money, but that’s not why I built Shuffle Buddy. I do this because I love teachers and I want to support their work.

My love for teachers means I will always adhere to the following principles:

1. The core experience is free forever.

There’s a teacher out there in a low-income district who is doing angelic work, and who can’t afford to pay for teaching tools. Maybe it’s you. If so, thank you.

That’s why the core experience of Shuffle Buddy will be completely free forever. You will always be able to set up your rules and then randomize your seating charts at no cost with no usage limits.

2. I only charge for the nice-to-haves.

If a feature is not essential but makes your life better, I’m willing to charge for it. Things like cute themes, more decor options, or non-essential organizational features are nice-to-haves that I feel okay about charging money for. If you want those things and are willing to pay, we have a deal! If not, you can always use the core experience for free.

3. If it’s free now, it will still be free tomorrow.

I will never go backwards. If a feature is included in the free tier, I will not start to charge you for it later. Instead, new features will be added to the pro tier that aren’t available for free. Some features may even move from pro to free over time.

This approach has a downside: When adding new features, I have to be a bit cautious. For example, the first version of the pro tier will include cross-device syncing. I would love to make it free someday, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford the infrastructure. So it has to begin life as a paid feature, and only become free if I learn that it’s viable.

4. I prefer invoicing schools and districts, not charging individual teachers.

Right now, Shuffle Buddy is designed to be used by individual teachers. In the future, I see a path to selling school/district plans that include features your administrators will love without compromising on what makes Shuffle Buddy great for teachers.

I would much prefer to be selling plans to organizations over selling to individuals. Ideally, individual teachers could get all the pro features for free. The new “pro” features would be tools for administrators. If I can move in that direction, I will.