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Don't Offer a Free Plan

nofreeplan.com

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Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#71

Post by chrysoprace »

To offer a contrasting opinion, I'm more likely to convert if I'm able to explore the product's free features in my own time. In particular, the "free for individuals - paid for teams" offerings allow me to spend my free time exploring a service and then advocate the product to my team. If I'm given a 30-day free trial then I'm less likely to have a chance to give it a proper look. I'm much less likely to create an account altogether if they need a credit card and auto-renew after the trial period ends.

I wish there wasn't such a focus amongst tech companies to squeeze as much money as possible from consumers. Sometimes I just need to look at it in my own time and sometimes a service isn't worth paying for. Service for hosting a web service? Sure, I'll pay. Transfer music from one cloud provider to another? I'll write a script for that.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#72

Post by awillen »

This is really aggressively oversimplifying a complicated problem that exists across a huge number of different types of software. In some cases, sure, a free plan is going to cost more in effort than it pays in users who convert to paid. That said, the objection that free users are going to take up too much time is pretty easily solved... look at Google, which has zero customer support and an enormous number of free users. As long as you set expectations up front, you can offer minimal customer service to free users (which also means you can sell it as part of paid plans).

But even beyond that, there are just so many generalizations here that may not apply to you. Deciding whether to have a free plan or not should depend on what the actual percent of your users that convert from free to paid is - you shouldn't just go with no free plan because someone says, "Many users will never ever pay, regardless of how good your product is and how much of a problem it solves."

There's some reasonable thoughts in here, but the absolutism of it shows that the author hasn't really considered the breadth of possible scenarios here - likely they've gone through this analysis with a product or two and come to the right conclusion, but that doesn't mean that conclusion is anywhere close to 100% applicable.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#73

Post by prawn »

kccqzy wrote: post #66
prawn wrote: post #32

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.

Strange that you mention Final Cut. It's clear to me that the free, limited edition of Final Cut already exists by the name of iMovie. (This was after Final Cut Pro X, not 7.)

I tried iMovie at some point but it was too limited to assess the featureset that would be required. DaVinci Resolve's free tier gives you basically everything short of 5K export, built-in noise reduction, and a couple of other things - easily proved itself indispensable so I happily upgraded. You also get some great forum help from high-end Resolve users that is relevant to those learning.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#74

Post by qwertay »

dempseye wrote: post #65
mmaunder wrote: post #10

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…

Disable his account.

Reminds me of the seller that bricked some guys iot roller door after a bad review.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#76

Post by webstrand »

cratermoon wrote: post #45
mmaunder wrote: post #10

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…

The article says, "Counter-intuitively, the less the user pays the more likely they are to need your help", but that's not so counter-intuitive if you invert it. 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 kno…

Oddly, shellac is both a desert topping—it's sometimes used to make chocolates shiny—and a floor wax. Sorry for the tangent, I had to look this up, and was surprised.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#77

Post by qwertay »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #56

Free plans are marketing, not that people on free plans will convert to paid plans en masse, but that people who will start out on paid plans hear about the product because of how many people are using the free plan. The blog posts, the twitter posts, the conversations over drinks. How likely is the free plan to work to do that, how do you make it more likely? i don't know. I just recognize the products that have don…

Most software tries to get students and individuals in on the free plan and then enterprises on the paid plan. Individuals were unlikely to pay for the software anyway but they can shill it to their employers.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#78

Post by ahepp »

projectileboy wrote: post #8

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 the "free" attention economy is what pushes software developer compensation so high. So maybe it's true that it's damaged the wholesome place the internet could have been, but I doubt it's damaged you or me as producers of software.

Consider the wages paid to tradespeople who make useful, non hyperscale products. Or even the salary differential between fields of computer work (web vs embedded, for example).

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#79

Post by pembrook »

christiansakai wrote: post #54

Slightly unrelated, but the mantra "Charge More" should be applied in context. I have a friend who is currently selling a super beginner Japanese lesson (and by super beginner, I really mean super beginner) that she charges for $45 x 6 month === almost $300, yet the content can be found on $9 apps in the App Store. She is confused why, despite her 8k followers subscribed to her email, she can only convert a handful f…

With just the information you've given, there's no way you can conclude with certainty that the price is too high.

The real question is, how targeted is the email list towards a japanese language course offering, and what is the open rate on the email list.

If everybody on the list is interested in learning japanese, AND, the email list has good open rates, that MIGHT mean her pricing is too high. Or not.

That said, I'd rather have 5 customers paying $300 than 50 customers paying $30. Let the big companies take on the cheap users. As a solopreneur you have to chose your battles wisely.

I'm skeptical that price is the problem. People pay thousands of dollars for courses with super beginner, freely available information all the time. If you save me a day of research to cobble together all that beginner information, that's $300 well spent.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#80

Post by grogenaut »

cratermoon wrote: post #45
mmaunder wrote: post #10

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…

The article says, "Counter-intuitively, the less the user pays the more likely they are to need your help", but that's not so counter-intuitive if you invert it. 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 kno…

It's funny that you mention experts use less support.

I work for an amazon subsidiary. We have free unlimited aws enterprise support. It's like pulling teeth for me to get our engineers to engage enterprise support. We know they have a ton of experience with triaging various aws tools and usage. Again we pay nothing for it, but one might consider we pay a massive amount for it as well. But we think we are experts on every system we touch.

Many of our issues would have been solved N days faster if we had just reached out to them immediately.

I would say we greatly over index on not bothering support.

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