Today we’re making a big change: Pace is now the app for online talk groups.

• Groups are hosted by anyone.
• Membership is now free.

That means we won’t be adding new professional facilitators. We’re going all in on the app and our members.

We’ve seen that online talk groups are an idea that is big. Talking to other people on the internet in real+honest ways is meant for everyone. We want Pace to be the home of the online talk group. Why? Read more below.

What *has* been Pace?

We first launched in 2021 to reinvent mental health through a new kind of group. We found incredible facilitators, asked them to run Pace groups on our platform, and charged members $89/mo.

The response was incredible, but even from the beginning we started hearing three things:

1. “Mental health is so important. What a great idea. There are so many people this would help. (*I* don’t need something that strong, but I’ll let other people know).”
2. “This is priced totally wrong. It is way too cheap compared to other mental health alternatives.”
3. “This is priced totally wrong. Now I need to pay to talk to people?”

Over 20,000 group sessions later, we realized something: members got mental health benefit for sure, but their groups were something more and different than that.

 Groups stayed after session and kept talking.

 They started group chats together.

 They named themselves like celebrity couples.

 They met up in person, and sent us photos.

 Some even said they met their best friends on Pace.

And it all started with real+honest conversation on the internet. It turns out, humans are supposed to talk and connect with other people. Should that cost money?

Maybe we (just) really need to talk to people.

A few months ago, we started asking people to join a waitlist if they wanted to attend free, member-hosted groups. Many thousands of you signed up to wait to get in, and the member-hosted groups themselves have been more of what we’ve always seen on Pace: real+honest people talking about their lives, finding community from common humanity on the internet.

Yup. It turns out, humans are meant to talk and connect with other people.

Fast-forward to today. What does relaunching Pace mean for members?

1. Pace is now free. We are taking the entire app and making it free – membership is free, every group is free. If you’re a Premium member, we stopped charging you yesterday, but your groups won’t be changing. If you’re in a group with a professional facilitator today, we will continue to pay them uninterrupted without your membership fees. We hope they’ll stay with us. There are groups on Pace that have been meeting up for years. And if you’re able to convince them to let you in, you’ll be able to join them as a totally free member.
2. Anyone hosts. The future of Pace is online talk groups hosted by anyone. Any member who has been to a group running The Pace Method once can create and host a group. And this week we’re launching 5 new features for hosts, including Host Rewards for some extra encouragement. We’ve built a platform that makes open, honest realtalk the norm – and we have many more plans on that front. If you’re hosting an online talk group, you’d be nuts not to use it.
3. Back to $0 revenue. If you’re scoring at home you’ll realize we are turning off all revenue at Pace. We think this is the right thing to do for many reasons. In the future there will be a premium membership again at Pace. We look forward to building that, but know it will probably look quite different than Pace 1.0. For now we think all that matters is unlocking human connection together.

Thank you to the members and facilitators who have been a part of Pace to-date. We didn’t expect this turn when we started the company and hope that we can do right by the collective magic we’ve found together.

Real+Honest,

The Pace Team