Why is it that Chess.com charges money for the basically the same features as Lichess?

So on this very site I used to defend chess.com. Now I wish I could go back and delete my former opinions. I left chess.com recently.

Chess.com does have some cool features, but IMO people pay mainly for 3 reasons
1) they do not know about this website
2) chess.com is 'pretty' (ie: the analysis 'game report' has pretty colors)
3) Hikaru, botezlive, xQc, Boxbox, Voyboy, and many others stream using chess.com (so all the new people go there)

The main thing is puzzle rush and puzzle battle. Yeah there are some lessons but I really don't think that's why people pay. Also for lower levels (like me) the lessons are really not very helpful. Doing puzzles and playing a lot of games is really all that people like me need. I've watched the lessons and they are OK but actually if you need video lessons then Chess24 is better for that.

Chess.com is weak on fair play. I got sick of this and left the site in disgust. Its hard to prove in this post but I've seen MANY streamers find cheaters while on stream. I could list them here. "OH but there is cheating on every website. Its impossible to stop all of it". While that is true chess.com isn't even TRYING to stop them all. They only try to stop enough so they can 'say' they are fighting against it. Lichess has the ADVANTAGE of being free. Lichess isn't going to lose money by banning cheaters so they can be as aggressive as they see fit here. But chess.com doesn't ban all the cheaters because they know they are going to be banning a lot of paying members. Oh I know they ban a lot. They banned a bunch of titled accounts last month. But I know they also do NOT ban everyone. Recently I saw a GM lose to a cheater and he reported them. But because that cheater was a diamond member they were not banned. (The GM talked about it on stream). (I'm guessing they got a harsh warning). If chess.com banned all the cheaters they knew about they would lose diamond members. Also would they still be #1 in the world if they banned them? I don't know.

It really annoys me that people talk about the new popularity of chess and new people all go to that site. On chess.com you can only do 5 puzzles a day and you only get very limited analysis. On this site its free. (I did over 10k puzzles on chess.com and I can tell you the lichess puzzles are just as good. Chess.com has the ability to do an unrated version and you can choose the motif and choose the rating range. That's great but I wouldn't be willing to pay for just that.)

So before the chess.com people flame but me, its not a bad site. And I think cheating is probably mostly in certain ranges. I don't think across all the ratings its evenly dispersed. What I will say is that what it provides for a diamond membership is not worth paying for in comparison to what this site gives for free. Its not worth the money.

@inmaniac the chess.com lessons are much better than the lichess studies. I once tried a lichess study on a opening, and it was terrible. The author just said the theory, without any explanation or model games. On chess.com, the lessons aren't made by unknown people from the street, their made by people who are experienced at making educational chess videos.

Well, that depends. Chess com could make an identical copy of Lichess, free of charge, as long as they stuff the site with tones of commercials it will be always inferior.

I don't like Chess.com because many games i play on there, I lose connection. I've never had that with Lichess.org.

@RangerGeek50
Original videos: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe5ZNOR8Ttm3b1ZW-yvHyeP-SdHJczfrG

@RangerGeek50 , Lichess has 1400+ videos,
Learn----> chess basic----->>>Videos

Chess.com’s premoves are also scuffed. I lost countless games just because I was losing time when premoving

Lichess is just so much better. Even titled players like Lichess more. The only reason players like Naka are on Chess.com is because they're getting paid(and there's nothing wrong with that). The gameplay(especially on mobile) sucks on Chess.com, premoves suck too. There are a lot of really great studies here but you need to look for it, which isnt that hard as the ones on the popular category are really good. Many studies are made to be interactive similar to Chessable which really helps for us who can't memorize theory easily. Ive had chess.com membership before and it isn't anything special. It doesn't really offer anything that cannot be found elsewhere, and it never helped me. For something similar to puzzle rush, blitztactics has been a blast. The opening explorer is free here, which is why this is where coaches usually teach

@RangerGeek50

I gave up playing on chess.com for many reasons. First and foremost is that it's inferior technology. Their software fills up your browser cache eventually causing frozen screens and even frozen operating systems. Secondly, I find the vast majority of chats on chess.com to be banal and often vulgar. Finally, chess.com's mods apparently do not know how to remove spammers and other trolls because I've seen such people utterly destroy chats for many nights consecutively. These trolls find ways around chess.com's flimsy "security" to make infinite accounts.

I was amazed that in my first week on Lichess, I was refunded 8 points because the mods reviewed a game I played and came to the conclusion that I was cheated. I was on chess.com for YEARS and never saw such an occurrence. There's a reason why Carlsen plays either here or on Chess24 but virtually never on chess.com. Chess.com is a woeful site IMHO.

I have got cc for free and donated to lichess^^