Because Junichi Ito's post was public, I wanted to translate my answer to Japanese before posting it. Here's my English answer:

Thanks for your comments and your support! I realise we should have done a better job at explaining how we arrived at the pricing.

With Doorkeeper, we’re focused on organisers who hold events on a regular basis, not one off events. This is why we’ve chosen to go with monthly pricing, instead of one a one off fee. We think Doorkeeper already provides you some value when you’re not holding events (people can join your community, you can send them messages), and we want look to how we can provide even more continuous value for communities. If you have any ideas how we could make Doorkeeper more valuable to you even when you’re not holding an event, please let us know.

We chose the smallest plan to have five upcoming events number because we thought it would be the largest number a non professional event organiser would have. We think that ¥1,500 per month is a reasonable price even if you’re only doing one event per month though. To make cheaper plans work, Doorkeeper would need to be a lot bigger scale that we are.

One thing that we might have not made clear enough is that only the owner of the community needs to pay for it. While 西脇.rb & 神戸.rb has only one event every several months, the owner of the community has many other communities he is managing. In total, he has three upcoming events, so if you look that the ¥1,500 per month is split across multiple communities, I think it becomes more reasonable.

If that’s still too much money, I’d consider asking your company to sponsor the Doorkeeper subscription. As a business expense, ¥1,500 per month is miniscule.

Let me know what you think. I want to find a way that allows you to continue to use Doorkeeper.