Elon Musk's X lowers cost for gold checkmark 10 months after trying to get businesses to pay $12K a year
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- Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter, is now offering businesses verification for $200 a month.
- Last year, the platform said businesses would have to pay $1,000 monthly for a gold checkmark.
- The new offering comes days after Fidelity estimated X is now worth 71% less than when Musk bought it.
In the latest less-than-reassuring sign for X's financial health, Elon Musk's social media platform has introduced a heavily discounted version of its verification plan for businesses.
The company, formerly known as Twitter, announced Tuesday that it's now offering a basic tier of its business subscription for $200 per month or $2,000 a year. It says the new option, which comes with features like a gold checkmark, ad credits, and the Premium+ subscription, is "designed for smaller businesses."
Adding an option at one-fifth of the original price would seem to suggest businesses weren't biting the first time around.
X announced last March that it'd start charging businesses $1,000 per month to keep their gold checkmarks when it got rid of legacy verification. The company quickly drew flak for the price tag, as businesses noted that verification didn't substantially boost engagement for them anyway, so it wasn't worth paying that much to keep it. One entrepreneur, William LeGate, cofounder of bedding business Pillow-Fight, previously told Insider the $1,000 monthly fee was "outlandish" and "meaningless."
The $1,000 monthly option is still available for businesses, as the "Full Access" option, alongside the Basic offering.
The introduction of the cheaper option comes days after X's estimated valuation took yet another hit.
Asset manager Fidelity, which owns a stake in the company, estimates X is now worth 71.5% less than when Musk bought it, according to an Axios story published Sunday. Musk bought X, then Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022.
X responded to Business Insider's request for comment with an auto-generated reply that did not address our question.