This thread reminds me of the one where people were quibbling about the cost of Argon to dispense their Romanee-Conti with a Coravin…
As mentioned, the only reason not to go Pro is to (help) limit purchasing, unless you are truly disciplined.
When I had an active Pro subscription, I bought a bunch of stuff pretty much on principle alone (“they’re practically giving the stuff away!”, etc.).
I use the pro version several times a week; like everyone else, it’s a no brainier.
I am not questioning the site’s usefulness but for a paid subscription service like this I feel that they need to significantly beef up and personalize the notification capabilities. What’s there is extremely limited and hasn’t changed in some time. Unlike wine reviewers, they’re not buying expensive wines to report on, it’s software and a few servers, and I think they should continually improve the usability and features to justify paid subscriptions. (I keep thinking I’d like to build this myself, not that difficult, but I believe the user agreement there prevents this.)
I have to say Carl that I have always seen a much longer and more exhaustive list with Pro. I’m not sure why you don’t see a difference, unless the stores you shop at are always listed in the free version?
Usually is a big difference for me… Hard to complain about the $40 given the “full” view of the market so nothing is missing.
I strongly agree with your philosophy, but I will say that they are paid by the stores that appear on the “free” version. So by using even that, you are supporting them. Still, then you would likely miss out on a lower price at a non-sponsor. Maybe even $40 lower. 
Unless I’m misunderstanding what you mean, this is easy to do. Let’s say the lowest current price on a wine you want is $100, and you think that is too much, but you would buy it for $90. Then set an alert for $91 max price.
I use it a lot but wouldn’t want to pay more than the $40 fee currently charged. Its priced right for its value and worth having.
I really like that CT has a link to it for the wine you’re viewing. That’s very useful if you read a solid CT user tasting note on a wine and become interested in what its sells for.
Yes, a conspiracy of enablers.
Do you actually see more products on the Pro version than on the unpaid version??
Finally getting some difference with a new list of wines. Perhaps the ones I was searching were just too limited in their availability (geeks had already bought them all across the country).
Definitely or I wouldn’t buy it but, if they jacked the price up much I might not subscribe. Its worth $40 to me per year.
Not sure I understand the question. You definitely see more retailers. Sometimes a great many more
The last couple of times I searched, I saw exactly the same list of retailers using Pro and Standard. But as I said, this was apparently specifically for a couple of wines that had evidently been bought up every where in the country. Just searched the 2010 Terre Nere Santo Spirito and found some additional retailers (even with good prices).
It may well depend on the wine. For the wines I buy, the lists are usually very different
That’s good, either they’ve improved it or user error on my part a year or two ago.
I remember other issues with notifications when I subscribed: sometimes I don’t care about price, I just want to get notified when the list changes, i.e. when an item is out of stock but still shows up, is in a state that’s too warm to ship here, whatever. I could blacklist the shop, but sometimes I don’t want to do that, and there was a pretty small limit on the number of places I could blacklist.
Edit: I just saw a good example of this on another thread, http://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1585886#p1585886.
If you could get notification of updates not just a lower price, problem solved. The solution last time I looked was to blacklist Empire and Amanti which someone may or may not want to do.