Akismet Testing Out Partner Program

Akismet has started an experimental partner program. Based on the information presented, it looks like this is aimed more at consultants who deal with clients and instead of possibly using their own Akismet API key, they’ll now be able to refer them to Akismet via a special link which indicates the three plans that users can choose from. What caught my eye regarding the different account levels is how they have been structured.

Pro ($59/yr or $5/mo)
For individual sites, up to 80,000 comments/mo.

Enterprise ($550/yr or $50/mo)
For multiple medium size sites, up to 80,000 comments/mo (total).

Corporate ($3950/yr or $395/mo)
For corporate sites, up to 300,000 comments/mo with key monitoring, priority service and annual invoicing.

What constitutes a comment? Are we talking about all comments in general that need to be filtered or 80,000 legitimate comments? A little clarity on that part would be good. Those who are chosen to be part of this strictly invitational program only, will receive $24.00 for Pro subscriptions while Enterprise subscriptions will net them $240.00. I’m very hesitant on calling this a referral program because of the following text presented on the page:

This partner program is intended for use with your existing clients. Linking to your referrer code on the internet, or in any way promoting it to people that aren’t your customers is prohibited, and will result in your being removed from the program. The plan here is to have less spam, not more!

If you’re interested in being a guinea pig for this program, you can sign up here but keep in mind that just because you register doesn’t guarantee you will be accepted. By the way, WPCandy was able to receive 25 openings which may help boost your chances of being accepted.

By far, the most interesting aspect of this entire partner plan is the fact that the links people receive will contain ONLY the plans for which users must pay for. I wonder if this will translate into more paying customers for the service or if users will shy away and either use an alternative anti-spam solution or figure out how to get by using it for free. The only way we’ll know the answer to that is if Akismet shares the data they collected during the beta portion of the program.