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Don't Offer a Free Plan

nofreeplan.com

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Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#141

Post by ineedasername »

Trial periods just don't capture people the way a free plan does.

I would never have transfered my task management to todoist if it was only a trial. It's a fair amount of effort to switch over a large chunks of how you function. I'm not going through that effort only to find out the product might be okay, but not enough to justify a subscription, at least not initially: Starting off often means you grow into using it more, more often, more features. A 30 day trial doesn't leave enough time for that.

Then there's word of mouth: A free plan I use regularly will be much more top of mind when talking to others.

Also bootstrapping: It's all well and good for an established SaaS business to not want a free plan, but plenty of products might never get to that point if they didn't bootstrap with a free plan first.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#142

Post by JohnCurran »

StavrosK wrote: post #46

I run deadmansswitch.net, and the free plan there only lets you send messages after two days, when people generally prefer much longer intervals. 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.

Your pricing page currently shows “Test” in the Intervals row on the Free column. I imagine it should instead say “1 day” or similar. Just thought I’d give you a heads up

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#143

Post by hinkley »

john_moscow wrote: post #70
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…

>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. If there's any consolation, people like this have near zero impact on the actual sales. Reasonable customers who research reviews are used to filtering out nutty feedback. So all you get is megabytes of virtu…

I don't have any way of knowing how rational this is without running more experiments, but when I'm down to final selection between a few products, I search for " sucks" on Google.

If the results seem fairly rational, I may have second thoughts about going that way. If the negative reviews come from people who seem unhinged, then the fact that they bubbled to the top is a good indication that only nutbars hate the project.

Call it hyperloglog as applied to counterarguments for a product.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#144

Post by brewdad »

derefr wrote: post #132
IMTDb wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me experience is the exact opposite. As a user: - If I need the service and only intend to use it for a very small project, I love forever free plans. Because I know I can subscribe use your server time and forget my account forever. I often subscribe with a temp email so that I don't even receive your emails anymore. - If I seriously need the service and is ready to pay for it, I don't really care about the free for…

How do you feel about a free-forever plan behind a credit card screen? Google Cloud is this way: stay below their free usage limits for some services and you'll never need to pay; but you need to give them your card up-front because it's a post-paid service and they need to ensure they can charge you if-and-when you do go over those limits. Or, for another approach: how about a plan that's free, but where there's a s…

This might work in a B2B relationship but as an individual, there is no site on earth that is getting me to give you my bank account or driver's license info as part of a "free" or "trial" plan.

Maybe. MAYBE. I'll give you a credit card number since I know I can always dispute/chargeback if you turn out to be dishonest. No way do you get anything that can't be 100% undone within a few minutes.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#145

Post by hinkley »

alsetmusic wrote: post #7

Really makes me reflect on how offering free content destroyed the web via advertising. If only they’d got this message out 20+ years ago, maybe I wouldn’t hate so much of the internet.

People tried. But the dotcom voices were louder.

And drunker.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#147

Post by dwg »

Don't believe it's a rule to apply universally, but it does strike me as perhaps a good rule of thumb:

Only include a free plan if you can demonstrate it leads to a better outcome (holistically).

So then, does the author plan to remove the currently available free plan from their own SaaS product, Friendly Captcha?

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#148

Post by foxhop »

alsetmusic wrote: post #7

Really makes me reflect on how offering free content destroyed the web via advertising. If only they’d got this message out 20+ years ago, maybe I wouldn’t hate so much of the internet.

Same here, I wrote about it in this essay over here: https://www.remarkbox.com/remarkbox-is-now-pay-what-you-can....

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#150

Post by jonpurdy »

viraptor wrote: post #129
inopinatus wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing in the post indicated hubris to me. Claiming that you are personally responsible for Jira and Trello's marketing cut-through is sheer hubris. And furthermore: > The alternative is to spend time and money to discover that yourself That's not an "alternative", that is simply professional consulting behaviour. Making the recommendation whilst declining to invest in the quality of that recommendation is hubris.…

Noticing that due to time/money constraints familiar tech with a free testing plan gets better chances of accepting is not the same as demanding freebies. If you have time and money to do a full review of every alternative available, go for it - don't forget to add training / new tech implementation to the budget. If you're in a "we need something that we know can do X now" position, you'll likely get a recommendatio…

Top parent here. I originally deleted the word “influencer” but put it back in with quotes since it was the best word to use.

You’re totally correct in your assertions and the understanding of the intent and meaning of my post.

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