Ask HN: What payment model should I adopt for my new site?

I am setting up a payment model for my new site.

The first question is do users prefer to pay a one off fee (even though that fee could be quite large) or do they prefer to pay a set of smaller monthly fees?

With regard to the payment model - I was unsure as to whether to give the user the account for free for 3 months and then once out of Beta to charge a fee for that account. Or the other option - when the user signs up they are asked what account they want - a basic account, with limited benefits, with no cost to the user or a premium account with a fee with the whole range of benefits.

Which model have you found to work better for both customer and owner?

Any advice you can give would be much appreciated.

Thanks

it's harder to convert, but whoever you do is going to stay a customer for a while. So you'll actually scale your business...instead of having to make a new sale every single day.

Read around instead. There is a ton and a half of information on the subject including lots of personal and very specific accounts. Search HN to find them. Then see which applies to your case and go from there.

Some prefer one off fee. Some prefer paying in installments. You should offer both if you can.

Monthly payments is better for long term cash flow management of your startup. But it comes with some admin hassle.

Single large payments are better for the short term growth of your startup. And it has no admin hassle.

So why not offer both?

3 month trial is a long time. Only offer such long duration trials if you know your service is very sticky but has a long learning curve. If the learning curve is short, don't offer more than 1 month trial. If your service is not sticky, don't offer a free trial at all. A demo will do.