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Don't Offer a Free Plan

nofreeplan.com

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Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#151

Post by jonpurdy »

protoduction wrote: post #90
jonpurdy wrote: post #13

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.…

Hi, author of the page here. I didn't expect this to end up so high on HN. You're right that there is a place for free plans, the article I wrote is probably too one-sided. I planned on adding an extra section near the end for some cases when a free plan does make sense (I will wait until it is no longer discussed here). Other than the "influencer" angle you mentioned, it also makes sense for products where you can o…

No worries; there’s always a balance between being overly verbose and not covering every edge case.

The core point of your article was still clear, and as a result generated interesting discussion and follow up for an update.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#152

Post by tpetry »

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…

The conclusion you made may be wrong. You imply that all these $9 apps convert more than a handful of people. But if they convert the same your friend already applied successfully the „charge more“ concept as (s)he is getting more from every subscriber. The $9 app needs to have 34 times more subscribers to be more successfull.

It‘s a very niche product, it‘s not easy to say which one is selling for better the value.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#153

Post by mjevans »

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…

What's your use case for the "one time fee"? Is this a barrier to prevent bad actors?

I can easily see use cases where someone without buying power can get a 50, maybe even 100 USD bond or 'license' of some sort PROVIDED that there's either only one or even more ideally a set of competitors who's "not a bad actor" licenses are interoperable; and work on the whole Internet for that task (without expiring until bad karma is dinged).

However no, nickle and dime-d to death, as well as those 'free but remember to cancel' plans, are the exact reason I'd never hand over real billing info until I'm serious about being billed.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#154

Post by cat_plus_plus »

This excludes - Businesses that have not yet built a product they want to charge for - Businesses that have not yet decided who to charge (individual users vs advertisers vs 3rd party sellers) - Businesses that have other money making products that benefit from free parts of the ecosystem It's easy to get cynical here, but Google/Facebook/Twitter are free for end users. Are you going to make all the sacrifices of toiling in a startup and not even dream of making it big?

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#155

Post by going_to_800 »

Guys, this page is for indie hackers, mostly with B2B apps. You all give examples supporting free plans B2C products from well funded companies.

Free plans are usually bad if you're a small B2B startup trying your way...even more so if you're bootstrapped.

I also see that people disagreeing with this tactic are talking more about how they like it to be, not how it's best for the business.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#156

Post by derefr »

brewdad wrote: post #144
derefr wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> give you my bank account or driver's license info as part of a "free" or "trial" plan.

Re: bank accounts, nobody was suggesting that, that's not how KYC systems work. Re: driver's license info, that's not quite how (well-implemented, modern) KYC flows work, either.

For "signing up using your bank", I wasn't talking about giving the service a photo of a void cheque or anything; I was talking about doing Single Sign-On into the service, with your bank acting as the SSO (usually SAML) provider, through a SAML broker.

I don't know if this is common anywhere else, but in Canada we have a pretty popular SAML SSO broker doing this (https://securekey.com/) ; it allows you to use all our major banks as SSO authentication agents (works with both web and mobile-app flows); and this SSO method is in use for many government sites (e.g. it's how you log in to file your taxes, pay federal student loans, etc.) Any (Canadian) business can actually add SSO to their site/app through this broker. And, just like with any other (good) SSO method, the app being signed into through the SSO broker doesn't receive your credentials.

Re: driver's license info, with regular KYC flows, you don't upload your driver's license info to the first party. Instead, you're directed to a trusted neutral third party (the KYC/AML provider), who has their own app; you give your credentials to that service, through its own app, which is essentially the account-creation flow for your account with that service; and then the first-party service you were interacting with SSOs you through the KYC service as an OAuth/OIDC flow.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#157

Post by alexh1 »

jonpurdy wrote: post #13

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 run a business that competes with those companies you mentioned, it's called Portabella (https://portabella.io), an end-to-end encrypted and privacy friendly alternative.

We have a free plan that basically locks you down collaboration wise (limits inviting anyone to your projects).

We haven't had many people convert yet (https://portabella.io/open) but I'm starting to think it'd be better to offer no free plan but a 7 day free trial

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#158

Post by bonestamp2 »

mNovak wrote: post #35
jonpurdy wrote: post #13

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.…

Agreed. I think free tier user limits (where appropriate) are much better than trial periods for evaluation. I'm busy, and if it's not mission critical, evaluating this piece of software may not be the only thing on my to-do list; I may hardly get around to it in 2 weeks.

Agreed. It may also contribute to additional competitor comparisons. If I only have two weeks to evaluate something, I'm likely going to be much more thorough with competitive analysis in that time period.

On the other hand, if I have unlimited time then I will likely start with a pretty broad look at the available competitors and then once I've signed up for what appears to be the best option, I'll only look into competitors as I hit roadblocks.

Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan

#160

Post by kureikain »

I came to the same conclusion for my saas. instead of creating a free plan I made it dirt cheap. $1 per month. my service is an email forwarding so it is tough to deal with spam. if i attract too much free users i have to deal with a massive amount of spams. by not doing free plan i have more time to develop premium features.

another thing is free user will more likely look for other free solution and always a free solution will pop up. So it is really hard to compete. take gmail, how can you compete with google free offering？

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