Marcin Wichary runs Unsung, a blog about software craft and quality, and this week he posted a small collection from his inbox: the emails companies send when a subscription price goes up.
The subject lines, as he lists them: “YouTube Premium Individual plan price update.” “Important: We’re updating the cost of your subscription.” “Upcoming Change to Your GeoGuessr Subscription.” “Upcoming DreamHost Price Change.” Printful’s “Product and shipping price updates.”
The only two emails I could find that were actually honest about the price going up in the subject line, instead of obfuscating it with terms like “change” or “update,” were Apple’s and Panic’s.
Apple’s said “Your Subscription Price Increase.” Panic’s said “Playdate’s price is about to go up a bit.” And, he adds, “Also note both telling you what the previous price was.”
His summaries include the old and new prices for four of them, so I worked out the size of each increase.
| old | new | increase | |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube Premium | $13.99/mo | $15.99/mo | 14% |
| DreamHost | $13.99/mo | $16.99/mo | 21% |
| 1Password | $35.88/yr | $47.88/yr | 33% |
| GeoGuessr | $4.99/mo | $6.99/mo | 40% |
These are not rounding adjustments. The two largest, a third and two fifths, arrived under “updating the cost” and “Upcoming Change.” Four examples are too few to say bigger increases get vaguer subjects, and I won’t. But nothing in the wording scaled with the news.
Here is what I think the honest two get right, put as a test you can run on any subject line.
Would this subject line still be true if the news were the opposite?
“Price update” is true if the price goes up. It is also true if the price goes down. “Upcoming change” fits a rise, a cut, a new billing date or a renamed plan. A word that stays true whichever way the news goes carries no information about which way it went. It isn’t technically a lie. It just tells the reader nothing about the one thing they would want to know.
Now try Apple’s. “Your Subscription Price Increase” would be false if the price fell. Panic’s, “about to go up a bit,” would be false too. That is what makes them honest. The wording commits to a direction, so it could have been wrong, and it isn’t.
Every one of the vague emails does, as far as his summaries show, give the real numbers in the body. So nobody is hiding the price. What the soft subject hides is the direction, from the one line that every recipient reads.
That is the asymmetry. A subject line gets read by everyone who receives the email. The body gets read by the people who open it, which, for a message titled “Upcoming Change,” is fewer. The body can be scrupulously accurate and the email still communicates less than “Price Increase” would in three words. The honesty that counts is in the line that travels.
Panic’s version does one more thing worth copying. “About to go up a bit” is plain and a little apologetic. Marcin titled his post with a line that has the same spirit, warm without asking for anything: “We all hope you have a great week, even if you never buy a Playdate.” A company that tells you the bad news in the subject line has decided to trust you with it, and that reads as respect.
Sources and notes. All examples, subject lines and quotations come from Marcin Wichary’s Unsung post of 17 October 2026. I relied on his summaries of the emails and did not see the emails themselves, so “the body gives the real numbers” holds only as far as his summaries show. Printful’s email gave no figures, so it is not in the table.
What is mine. Working out the size of each increase from his numbers, 14% to 40%. The one-question test: would the subject line still be true if the news were the opposite? And the point that the vague emails don’t hide the price, they hide the direction from the only line everyone reads.