Mozilla adds paid tier, new features to developer network platform

The move follows community desire for a more personal experience and a way to financially support the Web developer hub

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Mozilla has announced three new paid subscription plans for the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) platform, designed to create greater flexibility for its members.

Called MDN Plus, the paid subscription tiers come after the Firefox maker surveyed 60,000 of its users with the majority expressing a desire for additional customisability options in their MDN experience.

Mozilla also said the move was driven by the community expressing a wish to contribute to the platform financially, having relied on it for everyday projects and resources that helped land them their first job.

Mozilla’s MDN is one of the most trusted online hubs for Web developers, hosting code samples, information about web standards, tools, and other resources.

MDN Plus introduces three core new features to paid members including:

• Notifications: Users can be notified when their followed pages change their documentation to ship new APIs, among other things
• Collections: Users can now save specific MDN articles for reading later and share that library across all their devices. Collections will also see MDN automatically saving the pages a user regularly visits in a bid to help users find what they’re looking for more easily
• MDN offline: Paid users will also be able to access MDN while offline, a feature it believes will benefit commuters. The feature will allow users to browse the most up-to-date version of the website, access collections and still receive notifications

MDN plus launched on Thursday to users in the US and Canada, but a score of other countries will also be able to access the subscription tiers.

Countries soon to gain access include the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore.

Mozilla has announced the launch of three new tiers to the MDN Plus subscription, each offering varying levels of access and benefits:

• MDN Core: A limited version of MDN Plus that’s free for a limited time so users can trial the service
• MDN Plus 5: Unlimited access to the three new features and all new features that are eventually rolled out. The price for this tier is $5 per month or $50 for a year – Mozilla is offering a 20% discount on all annual subscriptions
• MDN Supporter 10: Includes everything in MDN Plus 5 plus early access to new features and the opportunity to provide direct feedback to the MDN team. The price for this tier is $10 per month or $100 for an annual subscription using Mozilla’s 20% discount

Mozilla first started expanding the MDN platform in 2015 to focus more on learning experiences with Learning Area. The section of the site was designed for beginners to acquire the fundamental knowledge needed to kick-start their career in Web development, before moving on to more advanced learning.

In 2020, Mozilla built on this initiative with the front-end developer learning pathway, a structured course that provided the information developers needed to become front-end Web developers. This included courses on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and tests to cement users’ understanding.

“These two initiatives were the start of our exploration into how we could offer more learning resources to our community,” said Hermina Condei, head of product for MDN at Mozilla. “Today, we are launching MDN Plus, our first step to providing a personalised and more powerful experience while continuing to invest in our always free and open webdocs.”

Ⓒ Future Publishing

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