41–50 of 232 posts
3 big arguments for a free plan from our perspective: Ease for marketing, allow Enterprise users to try out when giving up credit card info is a process for them, and lower Stripe dispute rates.
The OP sort of addresses this in 'won't I miss out on paid users', but it's sort of a cop-out/has some unmentioned assumptions। Anyone small wants to start off free and pay more as their usage (and own revenue) grows - enterprise may be willing to pay hundreds per month off the bat, sure, but are they your customer?
Anecdata: Trello and Jira both have free plans that I used that caused me to recommend them for paid usage at multiple companies I’ve worked with. Those free plans resulted in $xx-$xxxx monthly subscriptions. Asana has a paid plan with a 5-user minimum limit. I never bothered to even try it since I wouldn’t have the extended time to play with it. As a result it never even got mentioned to companies I’ve worked with.…
I don’t really understand why this gets a domain name instead of being a blog post. I read it feeling like this was the result of some collaboration or consortium trying to ask myself if the author might have something to gain from it, when really it seems to just be the work of one person. But maybe it is good to have an entire domain for some reason.
(In many ways I prefer the opposite: by hanging everything off of jefftk.com people who come for one post or project may find others of mine they like.)
It is sad but true that users that pay less, or zero, are more demanding on customer support and make unreasonable demands via social. Had a guy this week using our free product that has 90% of the paid products features berating us on Twitter for not being 100% free and demanding we convert and rely on donations to support our 40 person team. Makes me regret having a free offering. In my 20 years doing software star…
Cheap users tend to be inexpert users. Expert users who really value your offering enough to pay more are those who understand why it's worth the money. They likely understand the problem or use that your work addresses, and they have enough knowledge to know which knobs to turn to use your product and be aware of the limits of what it can and should do.
A cheap user is more likely to be one who isn't very savvy, doesn't understand the scope and limitations of your product, and thus thinks it should solve more problems than it does, or to put it another way, 'be a dessert topping AND a floor wax'
This serves as a time-unlimited trial that lets you try the product before upgrading, and if some people are fine with super short periods, good for them. It's worked out very well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“ demanding we convert and rely on donations” People whining for more is fairly normal. Wanting it for everyone in perpetuity is new. Does everyone think most businesses are somehow ad supported?
> Does everyone think most businesses are somehow ad supported? Not necessarily ads, but they might assume most businesses will monetize whatever info they get their hands on however they can. Especially so for free offerings ("you are the product" etc.).
A lot of what I use (including as a paying user), I use because I was able to start on a free tier and then upgrade as my needs grew. DaVinci Resolve, Sublime Text, GSuite, WeTransfer, Dropbox, iCloud, Sequel Pro, etc. I didn't try Premier, Final Cut, various text editors or paid-only cloud services.
All you've done is essentially say, "I'm an end user online who only knows one half of the equation but you should ignore costs!"
It just feels like a failure to engage with the point the article is actually making.
Anecdata: Trello and Jira both have free plans that I used that caused me to recommend them for paid usage at multiple companies I’ve worked with. Those free plans resulted in $xx-$xxxx monthly subscriptions. Asana has a paid plan with a 5-user minimum limit. I never bothered to even try it since I wouldn’t have the extended time to play with it. As a result it never even got mentioned to companies I’ve worked with.…
The article specifically mentions free trial periods as being a good idea.
Of course specifics and circumstances matters. If a tool is critical for the business then we will review everything in depth and pick the best, regardless of trial/free plan/etc. And of course, sometimes the critical task is simply to ship ASAP...
This is a great movement, and I hope it gets some traction. A lot of damage has been caused by setting an expectation for software consumers that they should never have to pay for anything.
I think author’s opinion about subscription fatigue is low-end market thinking or B2C. Most businesses actually making money are used to the subscription model now, Gsuite, Office 365, Adobe Creative Suite, NetSuite, etc. The trick there is to reduce the risk for them to try it on. Unless you want to pay an army of salespeople.