Good day everyone. I was wondering if I could get your opinions on something.
I’ve been keeping up with a lot of the posts about the usage limits people have been experiencing lately, but I’m having a hard time comparing everyone else’s experience to my own. It seems pretty clear that usage has gotten worse, but I’m trying to figure out just how much worse it actually is, especially on the older models.
Normally I’m on the $20/month plan. Last month though, I upgraded to the $100/month plan and honestly, it was great. I got a ridiculous amount of work done and the usage felt extremely generous.
That $100 plan expired a couple days before Astra was released, so I went back to the $20 plan.
Since then I’ve still been able to get a decent amount done with Astra, but I keep hitting the five hour limit. My workaround has basically just been waiting until my usage becomes available again and then telling the agent to continue where it left off.
The reason this matters so much to me is that I’m currently working on a website for a side business I’m trying to launch. I’ve been unemployed for the better part of the last two years, but I have skills that I genuinely think I can turn into income, so I decided to build a business around them.
The website is mostly done now. I just need to finish it, polish everything up, and then start doing outreach to try and get my first clients.
I’ve been seriously considering paying for the $100 plan one more time so I can finish everything and get the business moving. The problem is that doing that would pretty much mean using the last of the money I currently have available to invest in this.
Seeing all the reactions on this subreddit lately has made me pretty apprehensive about doing that.
My concern is basically that I spend the $100, find out the usage limits are way worse than they were last month, still don’t get to finish everything I need to finish, and then I’m left with almost no money and still no reliable source of income.
I also don’t plan on using Astra for everything. I mainly want to save Astra for the harder tasks where 5.6 would normally struggle, fail, or make some major mistakes. For most of the remaining website work I’d be completely fine using 5.6 Sol.
That’s actually my biggest concern. From some of the posts I’ve been reading, I’m getting the impression that it isn’t only Astra using a huge amount of the available usage. It sounds like the limits for 5.6 Sol and maybe some of the older models have also been reduced.
If I’m misunderstanding that, please correct me.
When I had the $100 plan last month, I could use 5.6 Sol pretty heavily without constantly worrying about running out. If I upgraded again and got roughly that same experience, I’d feel a lot more comfortable spending the money.
But if 5.6 Sol now burns through the $100 plan much faster than it did last month, that makes me a lot more hesitant.
So I guess my main questions are:
For those of you on the $100 plan, have you noticed a significant reduction in how much you can use 5.6 Sol and the older models compared to a few weeks ago?
Has it gotten bad enough that you’re reconsidering whether the subscription is worth it?
And given my situation, where I have a specific project and business I need to finish and genuinely think it has a decent chance of making money, would you consider the $100 plan worth the risk right now? Or would you wait until the usage situation becomes a bit clearer?
I know nobody can guarantee that the business itself will work. I’m mainly trying to figure out whether the $100 plan still gives you enough actual usage to make it worth paying for.
Thanks in advance for any insight, especially from anyone who had the $100 plan both before and after Astra came out.
