Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Free Plans Don’t Work

softwarebyrob.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 118 posts

Re: Why Free Plans Don’t Work

#81

Post by steveklabnik »

chc wrote: post #79
steveklabnik wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 'not innovative' would make more sense. WoW is a great game, and I have a ... long and very personal history with it. But it's a Blizzard game; their MO is to make the most average game possible, but make it incredibly polished. Many of my fondest memories are of Blizzard games, but (as of late) they're rarely innovative. WoW is the gold standard of fantasy MMOs. It just doesn't do anything new or interesting;…

So, basically, Blizzard is the 37signals of game companies?

I would agree with that assertion.

Re: Why Free Plans Don’t Work

#82

Post by Lewisham »

nhebb wrote: post #63
noverloop wrote: post #8

I think you should use a free plan if actively using the 'free' plan will eventually force the user to go to a paid plan. e.g. dropbox. If you just give your core product away for free then users will only switch if they need the extra features of the paid plan. You can still use 'free' for marketing, because total conversion rates with a free plan will probably be higher, just don't expect these 'free' customers to…

The problem with dropbox is that they don't have a client for automating backups. That means everything I store there has been manually dragged into the dropbox folder (see NB). It would take me a long time before the number of files I needed to share online exceeded their free limit. NB: Truth be told, I run batch files via task scheduler for backing up certain folder to dropbox, but I doubt the typical consumer doe…

I use symlinks to the directories I want inside the main Dropbox folder. This works well.

Re: Why Free Plans Don’t Work

#83

Post by damoncali »

revorad wrote: post #57
damoncali wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see iPod and Adsense, but Windows? Windows won for very, very different reasons. When Windows first appeared, it was far from the best product on the market. It won because it was already everywhere (because of DOS). Microsoft practically invented the "give it away to ensure market dominance" game (Ok, slight hyperbole there). It took the court system to slow them down.

What consumer OS on affordable computers (that leaves Macs out) was/is better than Windows? It took the court system to slow them down. That was not for their dominant desktop OS, it was for using their monopoly to push IE and server products. You can call out Microsoft on dodgy anti-competitive behaviour in some respects, but you cannot take away credit for building the solid product that is Windows. Heck, even now…

Windows won because DOS was already everywhere. It wasn't the best product. I would argue OS/2 and Macintosh were pretty significantly better. It's not a coincidence that it took this long (Windows 7) for MS to produce a decent operating system - they are now having to compete on quality. But you don't even have to buy the argument that Windows was sub-par. It doesn't matter, because that's not why MS won.

Just as MS used the omnipresent Windows platform to push Office, IE, and countless other products (with varying success) they used DOS to push Windows. That is why Windows won.

There's nothing dodgy about it - the point is there is more than one way to win the market, and being the best product is pretty far down on the list.

Re: Why Free Plans Don’t Work

#84

Post by wensing »

revorad wrote: post #41
shadowsun7 wrote: post #26

I loved this article, but after thinking about it for a bit I realize that there is an argument for going free. Two pretty strong ones, in fact. 1) If you want to get acquired - and we're talking about a big acquisition here - it would do to go free so you manage to score a big-enough user base to get noticed. And so the bigger company is interested in acquiring you not only for your technology, but also for your use…

Going free also makes sense if you want total market dominance. In which case, free is really the only way to go. No it's not. The other way is to make the best damn product in the market. I hate to give cliched examples, but since we are talking market dominance, see Windows, Adsense and iPod.

Market dominance goes to the best-executed whole product, not the best generic product in isolation of market dynamics. Making the best product is only half the equation. Startups also need a market strategy that works.

Re: Why Free Plans Don’t Work

#85

Post by petenixey »

This was the same conclusion that Homestead reached. They initially launched with a fremium model but after being deluged in freebie support costs switched to credit-card-required.

Although their overall signups plummeted, their paying signups went up by multiples.

It would be interesting to see if being freemium for a limited period at the very start is a profitable way to promote the company. Has anyone ever done a "get a free account now - available only for the next 30 days" experiment during launch?

Re: Why Free Plans Don’t Work

#86

Post by stretchwithme »

loumf wrote: post #73
neild wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS/2.

OS/2 wasn't good enough, unfortunately. It was very expensive at the start -- and then there was OS/2 Warp which was ok, but not compelling. If the world were as web-enabled as it is now, it might have been fine -- the way it was -- you needed all of your software to work, and it didn't. Even Windows 95 wasn't great (especially for programmers) -- it was Windows NT 4.0 that was good enough to use to get work done. It…

Definitely not good enough. OS/2 would not even install on some PCs from IBM without major effort.

Re: Why Free Plans Don’t Work

#87

Post by blub »

noverloop wrote: post #8

I think you should use a free plan if actively using the 'free' plan will eventually force the user to go to a paid plan. e.g. dropbox. If you just give your core product away for free then users will only switch if they need the extra features of the paid plan. You can still use 'free' for marketing, because total conversion rates with a free plan will probably be higher, just don't expect these 'free' customers to…

I'm only using Dropbox because it's free, all the paid accounts are overpriced IMO. For 3$/mo + S3 costs (~0.5$/mo) I have a JD account that includes auto-backup, multiple online disks in EU/US and multiple online drives.

Dropbox is using my money to subsidize the free users, I'm not getting 10$ of value out of it.

Re: Why Free Plans Don’t Work

#88

Post by frossie »

Groxx wrote: post #38
mortenjorck wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a good freemium upsell to me.

I might actually go for it if that were the case. It'd have to be damn-good exporting, however - quite frankly, I don't trust them with my data, especially given their lack of export progress + claims. The company as a whole doesn't seem too trustworthy. I want a panic button.

I am very confused by this subthread. If you run the MacOS client, and you are a premium subscriber all your evernote data is locally available on your hard drive - it's unencrypted and easy to see and parse.

Re: Why Free Plans Don’t Work

#89

Post by jimbobimbo »

damoncali wrote: post #83
revorad wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What consumer OS on affordable computers (that leaves Macs out) was/is better than Windows? It took the court system to slow them down. That was not for their dominant desktop OS, it was for using their monopoly to push IE and server products. You can call out Microsoft on dodgy anti-competitive behaviour in some respects, but you cannot take away credit for building the solid product that is Windows. Heck, even now…

Windows won because DOS was already everywhere. It wasn't the best product. I would argue OS/2 and Macintosh were pretty significantly better. It's not a coincidence that it took this long (Windows 7) for MS to produce a decent operating system - they are now having to compete on quality. But you don't even have to buy the argument that Windows was sub-par. It doesn't matter, because that's not why MS won. Just as MS…

>Windows won because DOS was already everywhere.

Actually previous poster made a good point with Vista problems - after a few years of bad press and Apple being a favorite, MS made a killing with Windows 7. Not for free.

Re: Why Free Plans Don’t Work

#90

Post by SkyMarshal »

revorad wrote: post #57
damoncali wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see iPod and Adsense, but Windows? Windows won for very, very different reasons. When Windows first appeared, it was far from the best product on the market. It won because it was already everywhere (because of DOS). Microsoft practically invented the "give it away to ensure market dominance" game (Ok, slight hyperbole there). It took the court system to slow them down.

What consumer OS on affordable computers (that leaves Macs out) was/is better than Windows? It took the court system to slow them down. That was not for their dominant desktop OS, it was for using their monopoly to push IE and server products. You can call out Microsoft on dodgy anti-competitive behaviour in some respects, but you cannot take away credit for building the solid product that is Windows. Heck, even now…

GEM OS was a contender too iirc.
Post reply on HN