We've been a bit quiet over the last few months, which is an understatement, we've actually gone completely silent. From having an overwhelming response to the platform since launch and a lot of feedback, bug reports, and then the pandemic, we've had our heads down doing some major overhaul of the platform. Trying to weigh that balance of doing what we love, creating and writing, and building Unalike for our community.

Today, we're releasing a major update to the platform a lot of changes. Some you might have seen already with some early releases, and some completely new today.

New pricing

We want to make Unalike as accessible as possible, whilst building a business that can support creators and publishers of every level. With our new basic pricing at €17 per month, we're hoping to give all creators an opportunity to expand their content and audience, with low price video and audio publications.

Our pricing is also free as standard from the start, so now more billing sign up. If you want upgrade, go to your publication settings and then billing.

Unlike other content management systems, we deal with the video and audio hosting ourselves, this includes the conversion, hosting, and streaming to your audience, however big that audience is. Because of this, we have to charge a small amount for processing, hosting, and streaming.

That doesn't stop you adding YouTube videos though, which you can add on any free content post. Just copy the YouTube URL and paste it into the media field at the top of a media article. If though, you want to see your videos to your audience with exclusive membership subscriptions, you'll need to be on the paid plan to upload those videos or audio.

Private publishing

Why would anyone want to publish just to themselves?! Exactly. We thought about it, and we've completely changed the way this works. You can now publish privately to a unique public URL that only you and anyone you share it with can access.

It won't get listed on your home page, or any other list, but it will be public. Anyone accessing it can access it without subscribing. This is good if you want to send content out to a select number of people outside of your subscriber list, or maybe you want to preview it before it goes out publically. You can always modify the access level later on if you want to make it fully public or for subscribers only.

New content list

Part of our overall look and feel overhaul, we've simplified the content list a bit. We're playing with the idea of filters and making this completely customisable for you, but for now, we want to make it clear exactly what's been worked on and what's published.

Support messaging

We wanted to make it easier for the community to reach out to us with questions and feedback, so now you can now message us directly. We've added a messaging tool, which you should see on the bottom right corner of the editor.

We're only online during UK time between 9 am and 6 pm GMT, but if you message us anytime, we'll try and get back to you as soon as we can.

Single payments

And we save the best for last. Not only can you now create subscription-based content, but can also now charge for single pieces of content.

This is great if for example if you want to sell a video or live session (coming this week). You might want to create a long-form single story or written piece or upload an audio-based book. With these new purchasing services, we're hoping to give content creators and publishers new and exciting pays to sell their content and ideas.

Pricing comes in GBP, USD, and our default currency EUR, with all the exchange and payment conversions happening our side, so you don't need to worry.

There's a bit more work to on this with the subscriptions side, which will be released this week, with complete flexibility with pricing that works for you and your audience.

Lots of little big bits

We've also introduced a lot of smaller updated and refinements along the way. Mostly performance and bugs, but also security and UX. Making everything work smoothly and securely.

We believe we have one of the best browser-based content editors out there at the moment, with a focus on writing and simplified media, so these small changes will make it even better.

There's always room for improvement, but with every improvement, it has to be for the right reasons. A lot of products tend to move towards complexity with growth, whereas we believe in simplicity from the start of an idea. Gradual and incremental changes that feel natural, without adding confusion.

With every change we make, we want to the experience for you to feel like it belongs like it just appeared without anyone noticing. You always knew how to use it, instead of having to write a tutorial on how to use the platform. Not built for tech people or marketing teams. Built for creators.

That was one of the founding ideas when we started creating Unalike, and it will continue, however large we get. We won't get it right all the time, so if things are not understandable as they should be, please let us know. We're always here to support you.

All that said, if you do have any questions, feedback or suggestions you'd like to add, please send them to hello@unalike.net, we'd love to hear from you.

Thank you!