Typepad Pricing is out

Hmm. Check out the price list, and tell me if you’d want to pay US$14.95 a month for the exclusive (i.e. not included in the Basic and Plus packages) ability to edit your templates. True, you do get 200MB a month and a decent 3GB bandwidth. Of course you could have multiple authors to split the costs with. But I think the Pro package is a little pricey.
I know Typepad is a beautiful, user-friendly product. And I know they’re targetting the growing market of people who want to write but don’t have a server, a domain name, and don’t know how to set up MT by themselves. But on the other hand I know that people do install MT for their friends. I do. I’ve set MT up at least five times for people who know little or no HTML, and they’re picking it up by themselves.
Apart from that, there are new, clever features to rave about. TypeLists for keeping track of your ‘media consumption’, add a personal touch. Another feature not available in Movable Type (as far as I know) is PGP signature support. Photo Albums, available to Plus and Premium users, are a good idea, although there are websites which offer similar services albeit with less space. Moblogging is a nice frill for those with suitably endowed mobile devices which I have yet to acquire (grumble).
Rest assured, we’ll hear more about the product from the growing list of people who’ve signed up with the service. Already the discussion’s started (see here for example) and it looks like it all depends on personal experience. Those who’ve had trouble with other blog hosts such as Blogger are naturally more inclined to sign up for Typepad.