Boards.ie is one of Ireland’s longest standing online landmarks. What started out as a forum for people playing Quake back in 1998, today remains one of the biggest online meeting places for nearly every interest imaginable online. But the waves of online surfing have changed dramatically in recent years, leaving Boards.ie fighting for its life. Today, the platform announces a subscription model to try to save itself.
The Problem With Boards.ie
A few years back, Boards.ie updated the technology the platform ran on. It was a desperate attempt to keep the site alive, moving from ageing technology. But now, technological advancement is really harming Boards.ie.
In a post on Boards.ie, the team highlights that “Google’s algorithm have had a dramatic impact, cutting our traffic in half almost overnight”. This was part of Google’s March update which included the addition of Google AI-overviews to Google search results.#
You wouldn’t believe the impact this has on sites like Boards.ie and even ourselves here at Goosed. Organic traffic has been decimated as AI harvests data and surfaces answers without people ever having to visit a website anymore. With the reduction in traffic comes less revenue from ads; ads which can simple only make money when people visit the website.
The answer, is a new Boards.ie subscription model.
Boards.ie Subscription Model
To make up for the loss in ad-revenue, Boards.ie is now launching a hopefully platoform saving subscription model. Ads are being enabled across the website to increase revenue. But ads don’t always mean the nicest experience (trust my – I know the irony – I resisted launching them on Goosed for years).
So Boards.ie will offer a paid ad-free subscription model starting at €6 per month, with options to pay monthly, quarterly, twice yearly or annually. The longer your subscription, the bigger the saving.
| Plan | Price | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | €6 | €6 |
| Quarterly | €16 | €5.33 |
| Twice Yearly | €28 | €4.67 |
| Annually | €50 | €4.17 |
It’s hard to see this as being an unfair move from Boards.ie. While ads aren’t nice, servers aren’t free either. And massive companies like Google, effectively acquire large quantities of online content from sites like Boards.ie without offering anything in return.
Boards.ie isn’t being paywalled either, to be fair. The content remains available to everyone, the difference being whether or not you see ads in between the posts. The platform is looking for a mix of paid members and ad revenue to save the site.
The Future of Boards.ie
While this change might seem simple, the future of Boards.ie is very much in the balance. Right now, the goal is 2,000 paying members to keep the lights on alongside the ad revenue and some other upgrades to modernise the site. But the post that brought this news spoke frankly about Boards.ie’s future.
“Boards.ie has stood the test of time for over 20 years. Now, its future is in your hands. We have a short window to make this work – and we hope this subscription model gets us over the line. But if no workable solution is found, we will have no choice but to close the site in the months ahead – something we truly hope to avoid”.
