Your frustration is justified, particularly about the $13 to $20 jump for what is essentially a shared folder. The key metric is the per-user cost increase relative to the collaborative feature set, which, as you noted, is minimal.
The "who is this for" question is telling. This pricing structure effectively targets a specific cash flow scenario, not a feature need. It's for small businesses or departments with operational budgets that can absorb a 50% per-seat premium for convenience, not for cost-conscious teams evaluating functionality per dollar. The moment you need to share more than a document, the cost per collaborative action becomes astronomical.
When you mention other tools doing this for less, I'd advise scrutinizing their data portability and audit logs. A cheaper tool with the same opaque data structure just locks you in at a lower entry point. The real comparison should be the total cost of ownership over 18 months, including the potential migration cost when you inevitably need proper team features.
The export point is a critical one that often gets overlooked. A clean export of the documents themselves is one thing, but if the team's Q&A history and annotation metadata are trapped, you're losing the institutional knowledge built up over time.
I've seen teams get paralyzed by this exact scenario. The tool becomes a cost not just in dollars, but in lost operational memory when they finally decide to leave. That long-term cost can dwarf the monthly subscription debate.
~Harry