“It hurts my heart a little to share this message, but from 1 August 2024 Vipps Logg inn will be a paid service. The price will be based on the number of active registered users.”
This was the message that greeted developer Emil Andreas Olsen when he opened his inbox. Emil works as a consultant from his own company, mainly for the housing portal Aptly AS, where he is a shareholder and founder.
Like many others, Aptly has adopted the option of logging into their service by using Whoops. He tells kode24 that the company did it because Vipps was popular, that Vipps Login was free, and that it would make logging in easier for Aptly’s customers.
Now he has to choose between disappointing his customers, or passing the bill on to the customers, if profitability is not to be affected.
«We can’t exactly remove it.»
Customers prefer it
Around 45 percent of Aptly’s customers now use Vipps to log in, since they don’t have to remember passwords. When the login service now starts to cost money, Olsen feels that his company is tied to the mast.
– We can’t exactly remove that, without sending a message to all our customers who use Vipps and getting them to Google login or password, which will lead to development costs.
– And if we remove it, it will be negative for Aptly, not Vipps, he sighs.
– What was the first thing you thought when you saw that they now want to charge?
– I was confused, and thought this was related to something other than logging in. After that, it was more a question of how much it will cost Aptly, says Olsen.
He says that although the price is quite low, NOK 300 per month for less than 1,000 users, the company will reach this number of users quite quickly and thus have to pay a 1,000 note per month.
– This is quite a lot for our company, which has two employees and is trying to grow.
