The German based Lesson Nine, the language learning company behind Babbel.com recently announced to their 500,000 users that they have switched over from a freemium to a pay to use business model. Managing Director Markus Witte stated:

Babbel is now a paid service. Freemium doesnt work for us.

Now, only the first section of an online language learning course can be taken for free as a trial demo. Full access to the course will cost between $6.65 and $11.95 USD per month. And this doesn’t mean the ads will go away, as Witte puts it:

The users are our customers, not the ad providers. We actually tried to launch Babbel 2.0  as a partly ad-sponsored service but it just doesnt work.

Babbel was funded by Kizoo AG and VC Fonds Berlin in 2008 and then again in 2009 it secured 1 million Euros in financing from the Berlin ProFIT program. The Babbel team currently consists of thirty-five full-time and freelance employees.

Babbel has revamped their language learning material and revamped the Basic and Advanced Vocabulary courses, creating several new courses and exercises. Much of the material is now licensed from well-known publishers or produced by teachers and language experts. By increasing the quality of the material, babbel hopes to retain users for longer.