Platform Upgrade & Price Increase Notice

Long-time members will remember that we carried out a platform upgrade once last October. That upgrade was aimed at providing better service and experience to our members, and many of you told us that the new platform offers much better usability than the previous one, which made all the effort worthwhile.

In the previous upgrade, we made a major change to our CMS (content management system), delivered a better UI and user experience, and, on the backend, migrated our subscription billing to Stripe (the world’s largest payments company and AWARE’s payment provider), which was a significant step forward.

The upgrade scheduled for mid-July will also involve changes to the CMS and UI, but compared to last time, members will not feel as many visible changes. A large part of this platform upgrade relates to internal systems, and is intended to lay the technical foundation for the future expansion and growth of AWARE’s services.

All content and data will be safely migrated, so there is nothing members need to prepare on their end.

To provide better services and benefits to our members, we will be raising the price of paid memberships starting this July. The increase will be deferred for members who have already subscribed.

In the early days of AWARE, when we offered most of our original content for free or at roughly the price of a cup of coffee, we promised that early subscribers would be exempt from any future price hikes. However, when we launched, our member database was lost, and we were unable to keep that promise. Combined with the uncertainty of future business conditions and inflation, this also means we cannot promise our current paid members something like a “lifetime exemption” from price increases. I sincerely apologize for this. I believe that instead of making promises we cannot keep, it is more important to demonstrate genuine, practical goodwill.

The decision to raise membership prices reflects our intention to acquire customers in a more strategic way. Naturally, the services and benefits we provide will also be upgraded to match. Through the PRO membership, AWARE plans to get closer to the top 10% of individuals with annual income above 70 million KRW, and within this year we also plan to expand into the corporate and professional investor segments (including pension funds and other institutional investors).

Thank you, as always.

– Ryunsu Sung, CEO of AWARE