I don’t see a good reason to switch from BASIC plan to PLUS.
The difference is 3000 “prepaid” points for PLUS account.
If I just buy 3000 points, I’ll spend $30. My BASIC plan costs $10. In sum it is $40.
The price for PLUS plan is $39.
There is a difference in $1 between theese two options. But in case you are on the PLUS plan, you must be careful about points expiration dates. For me, the better option is to buy points when you need and immediatly spend them 
What I’d missed?
If you are going to submit writings or participate in discussions regularly, but you know that you tend to procrastinate your learning, it is better to upgrade to Plus or even Premium
Plus when you upgrade you can get the extra 500 points if you enter type UPSAVE500 when you do it.
He unfortunately, does have a point. Plus you get that 500 point bonus with basic membership anyways.
Yep. I guess if you’re like Cakyra though, having the points already paid for motivates you to keep signing up for conversations and submitting writing, whereas without doing it you might procrastinate. I guess it’s like, if you commit to going to classes, you’re more likely to study than if you just go when you feel like it. If I had stricter deadlines for my language learning, I would probably give upgrading a go.
Yes, but for those that don’t have a procrastination problem, they wouldn’t do this. Also usually with stuff like this, you expect to see at least a 5 dollar saving. For most people it hurts to dish out an extra 30 a month. I’m not trying to put it down, but the only reason I even joined LingQ and purchased membership was to make a bunch of LingQ’s to keep a rough track of how many words I know. Other than that, it’s pretty easy to grab convo’s in your desired language, although not as structured as a normal convo, which is a usual problem. All in all, LingQ is still awesome.
Apart from the additional 500 points, my main reason for upgrading is the convenience: I’m extremely lazy and so don’t have to worry that I’m likely to run out of points and I don’t have the bother of the extra transactions. Furthermore, having a stash of points actually acts as a great motivator for me, (as I said, I’m lazy and need pushing.)
Guys, thanks for your thoughts!
I agree with NeverDie, you expect more savings when switching to an advanced payment plan. If there were another 500-1000 “bonus” points monthly on PLUS, it will be much-much more attractive for the plan updgrade.
But I see a reasonable point in a procrastination remediation also.
there are a few perks for plus and premium members, most notably that you can post in the ask a tutor forums and have a right to a prompt answer from a tutor.
Mostly though, I think people upgrade because they like being on a plan with a set number of prepaid points each month. It just saves a bit of bother.
It does not really matter which program people subscribe to. The bigger issue is how to encourage people to become more active and participate in discussions and write. I think people who have a tutor watching over them tend to do more. I also find that my discussion reports and writing reports help me focus on areas of weakness. Yet even I tend to be lazy about doing them.
When we had the Linguist, people paid per month, and were entitled to a certain number of online discussions and words of writing correction. They paid whether they did anything or not. There was much more activity then, although most people did nothing and just paid, despite regular emails from the system.
I would love to find a way to get people more active in our present more “voluntary” setup.