A message from our founders about building Gridwise for the long term
Dear Gridwise community,
We were living the challenges of being gig drivers firsthand when we started Gridwise in 2016: unpredictable earnings, a lack of information on when and where to drive, and a lack of tools to help us track and analyze our performance. With this in mind, we built a solution for ourselves and other gig drivers to earn more, keep more, and manage all of our gig work in one simple place.
Trying to make ends meet as a gig driver has only gotten more complicated since then and we’ve tried to keep Gridwise in sync with the daily complexities facing drivers. Throughout the changes in the gig economy one thing has always remained constant for us: our belief that gig drivers need and deserve an affordable and capable tool that helps them meet their goals.
We’re driven to make the best possible app for gig drivers, and each year we’ve tried to get better at it. In 2023 we launched improvements to our insights, earnings, and mileage features while streamlining the account linking and registration process. We hope that you’ve noticed and enjoyed the improvements in Gridwise, and we’re excited to show you what’s coming in 2024, like fully automated mileage and shift tracking, better income and expense management, and insights that are more actionable and personalized to your driving area, service mix, and goals. Almost 900,000 drivers in the Gridwise community over the past two years have helped keep us focused on what’s important and we can’t wait for your feedback on these new features.
Building Gridwise for the long term
Keeping up with the gig world has grown more complex over the past years, and our team and finances have become stretched simply supporting the app. Building Gridwise for the long term means growing our small team of 29 to add features, keep product quality high, and cover more cities. Unfortunately, the very features we all value the most, like automatic earnings syncing, mileage tracking, and personal data insights are also the most expensive for us to provide and maintain.
We’ve realized that in order to build a Gridwise that will be here as your gig companion for the years to come, we need to be honest with ourselves and transparent with you about our costs, and that is what this message is about. The future of Gridwise as a company requires us charging for our most expensive features.
We're putting Plus and the needs of gig workers at the center of Gridwise
Starting on April 18, 2024, some of the free features in Gridwise will move to our Gridwise Plus subscription service. The dividing line between our Basic/free plan features and Plus/subscription from here on will be features that provide automation or which are particularly complex and expensive to maintain. Most notably, automated earnings syncing from your gig services will become a Plus-only feature, as will our upcoming automated mileage and shift tracking feature.
We are committed to always offering a Basic, free, and capable version of Gridwise where you can enter and track your earnings, mileage, and expenses. Our Basic version will also continue to provide city-level insights to help you find opportunities to earn more. However, we will be taking a Plus-first view on many of our future features and improvements. The details of what will be in Basic and Plus going forward can be viewed here.
We are extremely aware that placing an additional financial burden on gig drivers is tough. We trust that you have gotten value and truly earned more and kept more of what you earn by using Gridwise, and we want to keep earning your business with an app good enough that it easily pays for itself many times over.
Users on our free Basic plan will still be able to manually track mileage using our manual on/off tracker, and will still be able to manually record earnings and expenses
We also know we couldn’t have made it to 2024 without the Gridwise community, so to say thank you we have a special price available to existing users starting April 3. As a Gridwise user you’ll be able to subscribe to Plus for just $6.99 a month (vs. the regular $9.99) and keep that monthly price for the remainder of 2024. Annual plan subscribers receive an even bigger discount, paying only $5/month billed annually, and will lock in that rate for as long as they have their Plus Annual subscription. Current Plus subscribers will automatically receive these promotional rates depending on your current plan.
This special offer will be available April 3, 2024 and will remain available until April 30, 2024. Sign up for the new plans soon and be ready for the new version of Gridwise Plus coming on April 18, 2024. And, if you decide that moving to Plus just isn’t for you, the earnings you previously synced will remain available in the app.
Thank you for joining us on this journey and becoming part of the Gridwise community. We are beyond grateful for your business and we hope you’ll join us in Plus. If you have comments, a request, or a question about anything from the team, please drop us a line. We’ll read every message.
Ryan and Brian
Ryan Green & Brian Finamore
Gridwise Co-Founders