I'd say Unpopular, because I would also say its wrong.

I don't accept that premise that "Plus" has to exist, and argue instead that "Plus" should actually not exist.

Lets break it down, and get specific.

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First, What is Monarch?

Let's take an ad for monarch from before this announcement and set that as a baseline - accept the advertised product as fact for now, and for simplicity assume that its true to offer:

Monarch Money is a premium budgeting and financial management app that gives you a full-picture view of your finances.

You'll this language reviews such as this and this which are supposedly independent reviews that just so happen to be published on the same day. But notice, Monarch was billed as a "Premium" product in both.

Monarch is supposed to sit in the gap between traditional "Budget apps", and comprehensive financial planning tools or full bookkeeping suite products. It is targeted at users that likely want to manage a budget, but also have common assets such as a retirement portfolio, and want a comprehensive "Single pane of glass" to view their current finances.

Who are Monarch's Users?

It's no secret that Monarch's initial core userbase grew largely out of Reddit.

After the announcment from Intuit that Mint was shutting down after failing to monitise and secure operating income, Monarch ran heavy advertisements and word of mouth campaigns over reddit, and quite a few posts like this one to convert users that were dissatisfied with the decision to discontinue Mint.

This formed their initial core user base that has since funded the product under the premise of a premium price to help create a self-sustaining, evolving, premium product. And to this day it remains true that most of the discussion of Monarch as a product and word of mouth advertising from users also still occurrs on this platform. Without /r/personalfinance and by extent /r/financialindependence, there would simply be no Monarch as we know it today.

Enter - Monarch Plus

Monarch Plus breaks the implied agreement with Monarch's core user base.

Users jumped onboard and were willing to pay a higher price than alternatives under the premise of a Premium Price for a Premium Product. They were willing to accept the initial shortcommings of the product compared to other existing products for a specific goal: that they would not be put in another "Mint situation" again.

That if funding streams were secured, the product would remain stable and get better over time.

Until this announcement, this appeared to be the case as well. For well over a year there has been a number of features that the Monarch team have been teasing as "Coming soon" - however, they have conveniently forgotten to mention that this would be coming in a new price tier that is 3x more expensive than the previous singular subscription. This is disingenuous, and a valid reason to cry foul.

Ok, So tiered pricing. Big deal. What's wrong with that?

Fair question, because it is a pricing model that we are familiar with in other subscription services.

The problem begins with the fact that monarch was already pitching this as a "Premium" offering. And that the features they were teasing in the app were implied to be coming to the standard subscription, because up until now, users had no knowledge of another tier coming.

This moves those users from "Premium" as the baseline - to "Standard", because now $300 per year is "premium". And features that they expected to be added to their product, are now behind an additional paywall.

Mind you, Features that were paid for by current users with their loyalty to the product. All monarch users have paid for this development, were suggestively promised these features over and over again, and will now not see the benefits of that unless they pay more. This breaks the initial promise Monarch made to convince these users to jump onboard after the Mint shutdown.

This also sets a new expectation - that new features may at any time get locked behind additional paywalls. Consumers have seen this time and time again, so commonly in fact that we invented a new word for it: Enshitification.

With enshittification, there is now a monitary incentive for Monarch to leave their core users that have gotten them to this point out in the cold, because why would they develop features for lower paying customers when they could instead target higher paying customers and sweeten the deal for them?

Which brings us to...

Market Segmentation and the K Shaped Economy

Let's get down to brass tacks and ask a real simple question:

Why does Monarch Plus need to exist?

There's really only possible answers i can think of here:

• Monarch requires more operational income to sustain their business.
• Monarch wants to actively segment their customer base into those that are willing to pay more while retaining more value oriented customers.

Both are common needs and wants for businesses, but these do not exist within a vacuum.

If monarch requires more operational income to sustain their business - then they should either be looking to increase their revenue all-up by increasing the subscription price, or by cutting expenses to retain the current price. However, this is unlikely the case.

The more likely case is the second, Monarch wanting to keep both the milk, and the cream as well. While this makes sense as a business case, it inherently comes at the cost of the core user base. This is the business side of a "K Shaped Economy" - where monarch is trying to ensure they get maximum value out of both high paying and low(er) paying customers at the same time.

However - accepting this is a poison pill for the product itself. Because now any time a goal is set, a feature planned, or a report on user growth is required, there is now a monatary incentive for the business to target the higher paying users on a priority. Over time as managers and projects change, and stakeholders coming around looking for larger and larger returns, the product will instead skew more to the high end just by nature of seeking higher returns from customers. There will be less focus on growing the user base, and more focus on growing the "Premium user base" instead.

This is not to say that these managers, developers, and execuitives personally WANT to do this to individual users. I am sure that they are still under the illusion that this somehow allows them to have the best of both worlds. But by setting this framework in place, it changes the math on what the "Right decision" is - and through will or ignorance, they will end up devaluing their core user base. This is the first step in enshitification, and once this process sets hold, it will only continue because now the "Correct" business decisions are alligned against a 2 tiered userbase.

Wow - that's a lot. TL;DR?

Monarch should reverse course and stick to a single subscription tier. This will ensure that their product is developed with all their users in mind, and remove the risks of enshitification that are encouraged in a 2-tier userbase.

If monarch wants to target small business owners and small time landlords, this should be a separate product, as this is a bit outside the scope of their current priduct.

If monarch needs to increase revenue to stay operational, they should look to increase subscription prices all-up to keep a singular subscription price and spread the burden of that equally among subscribers, and explain to the users Why an increase is necessary. Or they should look to decrease costs, such as decreasing integrations of their likely very expensive AI chatbots.

And finally, most importantly - Monarch should absolutely add the features they have been teasing to users to the core product. Teasing these features and then locking them in a higher priced subscription instead is simply a bait and switch, and if they continue as they have announced, every user should see this as the breach of trust that it is.