we killed the $5 plan
$5 was a tax. hoot is free now — one board, just you, mcp included. pro is $19 when the team shows up.
Jessé Cruz
4 min read
i used to charge $5 to start.
that was the whole bug. not the board. not the widget. the five dollars.
$5 is a weird tax. too cheap to feel like a real product. expensive enough that you open stripe, stare at the form, and bounce. and after 14 days i locked you out anyway.
so i killed it.
hoot is free now
one project. one seat. that's you.
no card. no trial that turns into a wall. no "starter" pretending to be cheap.
you get the board, the widget, the changelog, unlimited posts, the mail when something ships — and the mcp server. same tools as pro. claude code, cursor, codex. generate a token and triage from the editor.
the free plan is the product, for one person, for one thing.
why $5 was a trap
a $5 plan is a third thing.
you have to explain it. you have to checkout. you have to cancel it. nobody loves it.
the people who were going to pay were going to pay for a team. the people who weren't going to pay were never going to pay $5 to find that out.
so i stopped charging the ones who are still figuring it out.
when you pay
pro is $19 a month. $190 a year.
unlimited projects. unlimited members. slack. telegram. a signed POST to your own url. take the badge off.
the upgrade is "invite your team." not "unlock the board you already use."
if you grew past one board or one seat and then stop paying: those boards pause. the public page, the widget, the changelog stay up so your users don't eat the silence. you resubscribe, or you export. that's the contract.
mcp stays on free. on purpose.
i almost gated the agent behind pro.
that would have been the $5 plan all over again — a tax on trying the thing that actually makes hoot different.
so the mcp server is on every plan. full tools. same tokens. 120 calls a minute so a runaway agent doesn't knock the door down.
pro is for the team. free is for you and the agent.
that's it
sign up. make a board. don't give me a card.
when the team shows up, pay $19.
if you're already on hoot: you're on free unless you're on pro. nothing to migrate. nobody was on starter.
if you're not: usehoot.app
ask. ship. start at $0. 🦉