Free article limit?

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First time since joining seeking alpha I’m Receiving a free article limit message for about a week now.Didn’t receive any email or notice about a change on the site and not sure if others are experiencing same issue or if it’s a glitch I’m experiencing.  If there is a new article limit how many is it and how/when does it reset? 

Paywall
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-60
SA Admin Shubham Shresth
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  • Answered

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

In order to continue providing our users with outstanding financial analysis and news, we changed our Paywall policy in January 2021.

You can read more about this change here: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4396836-important-update-for-seeking-alpha-users

The good news is that you can still access any article on any stock, even without a paid subscription, though there is a monthly limit to how much you can read.

This limit is dynamic to the individual member, based on the device they use, the traffic source, and a number of other parameters. It resets itself every 28 days
.

If you want to keep reading past the limit, you can just go ahead and start your free two-week trial of Seeking Alpha Premium - no commitment required.

Premium, apart from providing you unlimited access to analysis articles also provides you with many other powerful tools that can help you with your investing. You can get an overview of the service here.


Hope this helps! Feel free to reach out in case further assistance is required.

Regards,
Shubham Shresth
Data QA Analyst, Seeking Alpha

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-23
Quote from mjupp10

You all need a better answer than this.  If this policy went into effect in Jan 2021, explain how so many of the people commenting on this thread are saying they are getting "you have reached your article limit" for the first time?  Your answer is just not believable and it appears you are not addressing it.  I should have received this message in Jan 2021 as I read a lot of articles every month.  I believe this strategy is a bad one and you are going to lose a lot of readers, many who make your comment section so lively and valuable!

I don’t think they owe any explanation.  They have every right to charge for what they provide.  

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-15
Quote from Desert dog

As a long term reader of SA, I discovered today that I have "exceeded limit."  I have appreciate the articles written by contributors and the comments appended to the articles.  I considered the process to be an excellent learning opportunity.  Although I consider learning something new every day to be a lifelong mission, I will do my learning elsewhere in the future.  I will delete my Seeking Alpha bookmark today.  Good luck with your new strategy.  In my opinion, you will need some luck.

Why would SA need luck with their new strategy?  The only users they will lose are those that are unwilling to pay.  Since they want to get paid, losing those unwilling to pay is no big loss.

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-13
Quote from doudis2

OK then. I just unsubscribed from everything by SA. Dumasses, just lost a ton of subscribers. I will be sure to pass on the news to all that I know as well. Your failure as a service is quite astounding. Right now I'm on the fence, who's stupider SA or Putin..hmmmm? Oh, and DO NOT contact me when you (after losing most of your members) roll back this stupid policy. I personally will never return to your site even if you paid me! Bite the hand that feeds you, and find out that that hand slaps back! Bye losers!

I’m not sure why you feel this was a loss for them.  All they lost was the people unwilling to pay.  All that’s left are those willing to pay.  That’s not a bad thing.  

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-14
Quote from mjupp10

Amazing with all the negative comments here that only one person from SA attempted to answer the deluge.  Someone from senior management needs to provide some clear and concise answers as to what is really happening here, otherwise you are just hiding behind your paywall.  Never a good strategy!

I don’t think they owe any explanation at all.  It is their site and they have every right to charge for it.  It would be the same as somebody asking you to justify why you won’t work for free.  

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24
mjupp10
Quote from Seeking more alpha than you

I don’t think they owe any explanation.  They have every right to charge for what they provide.  

I would agree with you if they:

  1. Had of announced 21 months ago
  2. They made it clear haw many free articles you will get in a month
  3. They did not all of sudden 21 months later, say, "oh by the way, you reached your limit," when for many of this had never happened over the 21 months.

It is a muddled launch at best and should be clarified.

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15
mjupp10
Quote from Seeking more alpha than you

Why would SA need luck with their new strategy?  The only users they will lose are those that are unwilling to pay.  Since they want to get paid, losing those unwilling to pay is no big loss.

A big part of the uniqueness and value of SA is the discussion threads - many of them provide more value than the articles themselves.  If they lose a big chunk of your readers, they will lose this huge value add.

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16
D. Davis

I see several comments on here resembling "I pay, so you should too.". Pathetic responses missing the point.

SA provides services via paid subscriptions with a group of mostly talented authors, which I'm not interested in, and until last week provided free news aggregation with a comment section, which was the only reason I was here.

I get more extensive paid news feeds from my brokers. No reason I would pay for those same news articles just because SA aggregates them.

It was the interaction between investers in the comment section that I found value in which was value brought to SA in this instance, not the other way around.

I'll miss the interaction but I'm not losing sleep ovee it. And surely SA analyzed their website data before deciding this change so those like me must have been few on their site.

To other retirees out there, glta.

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MitjaL

Of course SA can do whatever they want with their site. But there are two excellent reasons why their current actions are not in their best interest:

(1) Free readers have value. The provide comments, they provide word-of-mouth advertising, and they sometimes subsrcibe to marketplace services where SA surely takes a cut.

(2) If they had reasonable service tiers and if they did not make unannounced and unexplained changes to them, readers would be more likely to decide for a paid subscription. Hell, if they behaved this way, and if they offered something decent for ~10 USD/month, I would sign up. But the regular price is quite a bit higher, and I do not like their business practices, so I will probably not do this. I will wait a bit more to see if the situation resolves somehow, but I will then try to find some service that suits me better than SA.

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jchi

FYI I received 2 responses from seeking alpha prior to them posting my inquiry above with their response. I sent them this response still

unanswered. 

So you initiated this policy in Jan 2021 with no notice, then suddenly enforce the policy and block all articles starting in October 2022. Wasting my time trying to troubleshoot the problem and your first response was check your cookie settings and ad blocker, really is that what it could be? Press and hold the reset button will fix it, really that’s the fix?Intentionally wasting more of my time when you knew all along you initiated this problem I was encountering. That was a rather unprofessional way to handle this situation and an intentionally vague follow up response to continue your nonsense. Now I’m supposed to subscribe to “your service” after you intentionally lie and waste my time. Is that how it works at seeking alpha?

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dstb

Have to agree with most comments here.  I am a long time user and have deactivated almost all my subscription emails and will be spending no time on the website in the future as there is no reason whatsoever with a 5 article limit.  You guys should definitely rethink this policy decision which was not rolled out well at all.  Most had no idea it was even coming.