I personally think he could've handled this is in a much nicer way, calling a business shady or saying they screw over clients instantly sets the precedent that you're trying to attack them. If he just asked them what would happen when his website goes viral, I'm sure he would've gotten a proper response.

The CEO definitely wasn't as professional as he should've been, but I'm not sure how I would feel when someone calls my business shady or says I'm screwing over clients over what might have been a misunderstanding.

Well it's is kinda of shady for B2C market, where every cent counts for the customers.

There is no way easy way to explain why it's done this way, because it's obviously made on purpose to earn more $$.

What's the alternative tho? In the case his website goes viral, is Ghost supposed to just shut down the website when it reaches its limits? Sending a notice that you'll be upgraded in 7 days if your usage continues seems like a fair deal. (Perhaps it could be 30 days, but then Ghost is also just giving away their product for free)

The way I see it, there are two numbers:

- active stuff users, that could be solved by adding new ones only after an upgrade

- views/month - this one is harder to fix, I think it should be selectable by the user how to deal with it.

He asked what would happen if he went viral, and his site was deleted without that question being answered. They appear to have a policy for that situation that would've likely appeased the customer so it should've been trivial to respond with that.

It would be standard practice to disable the "add staff" button after two users and alert the user to upgrade options. I can't think of a service that doesn't operate like this, actually.

He did, while including that they're trying to screw over clients, and implying they're a shady business in his email. Again, he could've asked this without making these accusations.

I agree, they should've disabled the "add staff" button.

He expressed his disapproval of one particular practice and I don't blame him. I think it's a shady feature too - getting people accustomed to a feature above their plan and then default-upgrading unless they take a particular step.

They have a solid policy for traffic spikes which is to be commended, but with something like adding staff, which is an active user decision, I think the method is reminiscent of dark patterns which this community tends to resent.

When your first response is to shittalk the vendor on social media rather than contact them through normal channels, you're likely to be a net-negative customer.

His shitpost tweet timestamp was 07:21; his screenshot of his email says it was sent at 13:29. Maybe time zone accounts for some disparity, but there was certainly no attempt to allow a response before shitposting.

How exactly was it a shit shit talk?

So it's okay to only praise executives over social media, but you can't say anything else? That's stupid.