Seeking feedback on idea: alternative to Patreon

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

Hi folks,

I messaged a few of you about this already, but was just given mod permission to post it at top level.

I’m a Patreon creator (http://patreon.com/davidstorrs), and a web developer. My business partner and I are frustrated enough with Patreon that we’re building an alternative. We’d like to make sure it does what people actually want so, if you have a minute, I’d really appreciate your feedback.

We think the site should have:

* No percentage taken from your pledges
* Charge patrons immediately to avoid in-and-out “pledge-dodgers”
* Content management for all your content, past and present
* Specify when things should become visible (a.k.a. a publishing queue)
- ...to whom
- ...and for how long
* Ban abusive or exploitative patrons

As far as creators go, our current plan is that early adopters would receive as much storage as they need (within reason!), and future creators would get 1GB of storage for $9.99/month. Again, these are tentative plans and might change as we do more research.

All comments appreciated; a few questions I'd love answers to:

1) Does this sound like a service you would use?

2) Are there any other features you’d like?

3) What is particularly good about Patreon?

4) What issues do you have with Patreon?

Comments

Agree of having an alternative to Patreon

[chin yew (from livejournal.com)]

I'm getting a little frustrated with Patreon's lack of some basic and most logical requirements as a platform. I'm working hard as hell just to get Patrons and only to be disappointed with Patreon's lack of support to help my journey to be smoother. With the monthly declined pledges increasing every month, I'm starting to search for other options of platform that is similar to Patreon. I need a platform where I can post daily comic strips, where my patrons get to choose to have per post notification or weekly or even monthly updates to my posts. Some patrons prefer not to be bombed with emails daily. Some of the other basic features that I would like to have is to keep track of the Patron's coming in, out, an immediate notification of their declined pledges, a detail breakdown of calculation of every month's final calculation of pledges. And also a report of reason when I get a declined pledges so I can communicate with my Patron to solve the problem. Whether it's card details, max limit or security protection from the bank. I'm getting respond from Patreon stating they have no idea. And this bugs me alot as I've to keep reminding my Patrons to reenter their card details. Getting them to pledge at the first place has already proved a lot of effort and seeing their card declined without a specific reason really pisses me off. I need help, I'm a comic artist. Thanks in advance.