“What do they even do besides provide the entire platform for the creators?”

Come on man lol. If they were not needed they wouldn’t exist.

They might not remember the days befoee sites like patron

How did you get that? They’re just consolidating their pricing tiers. There was an $8 one and a $12 one, now there is only $10. Smack bang in the middle.

They say they haven’t increased their prices in 6 years. That doesn’t mean their prices have stayed the same, oh no - that means that their prices have decreased over that time due to not keeping up with the massive inflation since then.

They haven’t increased prices in 6 years. Inflation over the last 6 years is like what, 30%?

It's not $10. It's 10%.

We’re consolidating our pricing to a standard 10% platform plan + applicable taxes

In May 2019, we introduced new creator plans and fees: Pro at 8%, and Premium at 12%

Percentage is inflation proof. They did not decrease anything over time.

I get what you are saying but unless pateron does waaay more than I think they do 10% cut for hosting a web page to take subscription money seems unreasonable. Which is where all the hate for it comes from.

Ok so what are the alternatives & how we can make a better one if there are no good ones ?

10%, $10, doesn’t matter.

Percentage isn’t inflation proof. Them taking a percentage only means it increases with inflation if the thing they’re taking a percentage of does too.

Someone else should do it for 9% then. Easy, right?

Ko-fi charges a 5% platform fee on some features (like memberships, shop, and commissions), but donations are free. They also charge payment processing fees from PayPal or Stripe.

There is also Buy me coffee

We don't charge a monthly fee. All features, including publishing and emails, are free for everyone. We charge a 5% transaction fee, and creators keep 95% of the earnings.

The issue is the size of platform. Once you get to certain size you can do w/e for hosting fees plus brand name support people feel comfortable donationing to. Only fans and subscriberstar charge more because others dont support NSFW stuff so thats obviously a jerk move. Sure pateron does things like tier system but is that really worth the cost. Im not sold on it yet.

Seriously, hasn't any of these companies looked around for the past decades?

Whenever I read a report like this, said company will be dead or sold off for parts within a few years because all the customers walked away.

You're facilitating a basic service, a basic service people can easily do without. Don't get cocky, be happy with what you got, be grateful, be sure your customers know you're grateful.

Get greedy gets death

We also want to minimize any impact to your business, which is why prices are not increasing for you or anyone with a published Patreon page that launches on or before August 4th.

If you publish a new Patreon creator page before or on August 4th, you’ll lock in the lower, 8% platform plan.

They wrote that in their message.

Fairly certain what you describe is what they meant with inflation proof, compared to a fixed price.

In any case, I imagine most Patreon creators have over time adjusted their reward tiers, or gathered more Patreon supporters to keep up with how Inflation affects their costs, thus giving more to Patreon. Both the company and creators would benefit here.

Instead, increasing the (average) percentage just helps the company at the cost of creators. To make their pay keep up with inflation, they still need to either increase the number of supporters or the price of rewards, so the company benefits doubly. Edit: forgot, this change is currently only for new creators. Existing accounts do not need to adjust their pricing (yet)

There seem to be enough alternatives that only charge a 5% fee, so this might just lose Patreon money if enough Creators see this as a step too far.

So how does that indicate that their business model is stagnating?

So if those platforms are better everyone will move to them if they don't like a 2% increase (or 2% decrease) in fees on Patreon. That's great, that's how the free market works. Vote with your dollars.

I assume new users get lower chance to get high donations. I found this chart today https://graphtreon.com/patreon-stats, not sure how legit it is but it just proves that they are not rapidly growing anymore.

Not growing at an absurd rate doesn’t mean their business model is stagnating.