Importing to DreamWidth

[lethargic_man]

The last few times LiveJournal have changed things, I've been giving serious consideration to moving to DreamWidth; and this time I might actually do it (particularly as my yearly paid time at LiveJournal is coming up for renewal soon).

However, a quick goosey-goosey at DreamWidth shows that a free account on DW provides most of the functionality of a paid account on LiveJournal; and DW charge almost twice the amount for a paid account that LiveJournal do. Whilst I'd be willing to pay to help DW succeed, I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay twice the price for the benefit of (a) being able to have as many icons on DW as on LJ (though this would be a necessity to import my blog from LJ without losing all of the iconage), and (b) being able to post polls. There's other functionality available for paid accounts, but nothing which I would gain any advantage from, in terms of what I use my blog for.

Can any of the DWers amongst you give me better reasons to part with my cash and get a paid account at DW?

Comments

[green_knight]

The icons are a lure for me, but the main reason why I try to pay for a DW account is that I love the platform, I love their ad-free community-oriented product, and I want to support them. If LJ goes away/becomes entirely unusuable (very much heading that way), I'll be sad, but I'm no longer panicking that I'll lose a sizeable portion of my social circle.

[liv]

My favourite paid account benefits are: being able to search my journal, and being able to edit my comments. I don't need the extra icons; basically I regard the payment as a donation. Being you, you probably already have a greppable backup of your journal on your desktop, so the search thing might not be a big bonus to you.

My compromise is to buy a vanilla paid account ($35 per year, which by my calculations is 40% more expensive than LJ, not twice as much). I don't buy the more expensive premium account as I don't even come close to the limits on an ordinary paid account.

[lethargic_man]

My compromise is to buy a vanilla paid account ($35 per year, which by my calculations is 40% more expensive than LJ, not twice as much).

How do you manage that? LJ charged me $19.95 last year, and are inexplicably planning to charge me $17.61 this year, which is almost exactly half $35. (I wasn't planning to go for the premium account.)

My compromise (if I do do this move) will probably be to pay DW for the first year, just so I don't lose all my icons, which gives me a year to decide whether to do that again or to psyche myself up to eliminating three old icons...