Is chess.com too expensive?

I was a member of the Internet Chess Club aka ICC for two years. I decided not to renovate my membership last year and started playing elsewhere on the internet for free.

However, I really do miss ICC's video lessons and other features (which were excellent). Apparently, chess.com offers similar things however their price is 40% more expensive than ICC.

I beleive Chess.com price for membership is too expensive.

Personally, I think it's too expencive, but that's why I just don't upgrade my account.

I did try whatever videos they offer for free. None seems better than ICC. At most is equal.

I do value the fact that you can play here for free though. Chess.com is unbeatable at that. 

I think it varies from person to person.  For people who don't use the features, it will obviously be way too expensive.

if you get the yearly deal it's much cheaper than that (around 8 bucks,I think).

Well.. it's not about 14 bucks being a lot of money or not. It still seems like many people think it's expensive.

On top of that it is more expensive than ICC while it's not decisively better. I disagree that ICC videos are designed for GM's only.

In any case, I'm happy to just play here for free.

I don't know why they let these ICC peeps come over here and poop on the forums? ICC lover...

 hey.  HEY!  ICC's not so bad.  I was a member there for four years (price kept getting higher though, so I left). 

However, the basic membership here is better (imo).  And if you've got money to burn, why not blow it on a premium membership here?

Though, gotta say, it would be Really nice if (like ICC) chess.com had Live tournaments (yeah, yeah, I know, "shortly" but they've been saying that for over two years!), and a seek filter for lag settings of opponents.

sftac

By allowing a boatload of people to play for free, and putting up with all the crap that comes with it, chess.com is exposing all these people to chess while running a good site and offering alot of features on top of it.  If they charge a little extra so be it.  They do a good job and the site is friendly and attractive to avergage-below average strength players which make up the vast majority of the games players. 

I pay for membership to both ICC AND chess.com. I do this because I like many of the features premium members here get (unlimited problems on tactics trainer, the videos...once in a blue moon I use chess mentor), but I do my serious practice on ICC, something I would never do on chess.com.

I say, have everyone pay, even if the entry level fee is only 99 cents per month. Just think of the size of the membership and how many dollars that would be!

Umm...let's see. 4 million members x  99 cents per month x 12 months = approx. 48 million bucks! Chess.com could hire more highly qualified chess experts to provide a gazillion more services, like someone to polish my chess set.

I wonder if chess.com corporate ever plays games with numbers like that, wondering, what if we... 

Does chess.com even have 48 paid staff members? Each would make a million dollars per year, using my math. Ya know, they should pay me good money just to think up creative stuff like that on a regular basis.

This appears to be a case of music and math having no correlation whatsoever

I don't buy CDs anymore. True artists should be broke

 Interesting.  However, on visiting your profile, I see you appear to have not played one live or online game on chess.com (what's up with that?  how would you know personally, how good or awful chess.com is in practice?)

sftac

I'm an intoxicologist. Totally broke.

What's the main subject of your writing, LisaV?

 I know that, in general, all the strongest players play online chess at either ICC or Playchess. I want access to the strongest possible pool of players. Also, I hear that there have been cheating issues on chess.com...not something I want to deal with. I understand cheating can occur anywhere, but I have never felt I played a cheater on ICC or on Playchess (when I played there for a couple of years).

This summer I took up correspondence chess (though I'm not extremely serious about it). Where do I play? On the ICCF* webserver, of course!

*International Correspondence Chess Federation...basically, the equivalent of FIDE for correspondence, and the only correspondence organization that awards GM titles, World Championships, etc.

Pastors