191–200 of 232 posts
I think the most important question is who created this page and if they have any kind of success with their SaaS in a way Bitrix24, Slack, Trello, Notion or Miro do, which all have lifetime free plans and millions of users.
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…
One thing is for sure, no one likes a service that changes prices with free > paid being the least likable. (paid > free as the nr 2?)
I think you can get away by describing the situation properly in advance. i.e. what might happen with the free service in the future. Something like: Guaranteed to be free for 6 months (12 months if you register now). If we fail to reach an audience by offering a free plan it will be x dollar per month/year/query. We will contact you 3 months in advance.
It seems the free pony! era has to end. Downtime from cleaning up after a vanishing free service is to annoying.
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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,…
Well, I looked into her courses (and I, though not a beginner, already tried more than 20 apps out there so I know what a $300 or $9 content should look like), and plenty of people on her social media commented that it is way too expensive... Going by your logic, why doesn't she increase the price to $30000?
Millions of people in the US pay $30,000 or more to do basically that same thing (per year!) ie. they take a series of outdated 101 basics classes for an “associates” degree.
Look at what Ramit Sethi does, he charges thousands of dollars for what can be summed up in one sentence; “live below your means and buy index funds.” And people find that a good value because it’s convenient and structured!
Anything is possible if it’s positioned correctly.
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
Since this headline is likely to have a decent amount of people reading comments and not the article, I just want to highlight their suggestion of a "lifetime try-out plan". It's a pretty original thought, I don't think I've ever seen a SaaS use that. I have seen trial plans with a small $ attached before though.
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Apart from those (I could name some medium and large financial services companies the following supplies to, but won't for obvious reasons) who officially have their own first-line support (and even try demand a per seat discount on that basis) but that support is useless: their idea of providing support is simply forwarding emails to us, no triage, no collation, no digging for extra information. Heck, sometimes they…
I guess that is possible, I am only working with anecdotal evidence here. I have only ever seen the case where internal support handles most issues and less than a handful needs to be escalated to the vendor each year.
We've had a couple on the dark side though. Perhaps because we are "too helpful" and actually, respond instead of forwarding on the support procedures documentation or pointing at the contract and coughing! Give 'em an inch, they'll take a foot, and before you know it you won't have a leg to stand on...
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Sounds like he wants to contribute to the conversation on a subject that he cares about by building something? Seems like generally a good thing to me.
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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-…
Personally, I use my bank only for banking and would never ever consider using them as an SSO provider. They handle my money, I don't want them to handle anything else or have any more information about me than they already do. Also, in my personal experience, the banks aren't very technologically competent, so the less they are expected to do, the better.
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> This sounds like a case of a free plan makes sense when the target for the free plan is someone without purchasing authority looking for leverage. Well, that. Or somebody with leverage trying to reduce risks before jumping into a platform. Or somebody evaluating the options before deciding. Or somebody just making something the quickest way possible, leaving slow decisions for later... There are many cases that fit…
> Or somebody evaluating the options before deciding. Or somebody just making something the quickest way possible, leaving slow decisions for later... This is exactly it. I've been both with and without purchasing authority. WITH purchasing authority, at many organizations, I still need paperwork and approvals. To give an extreme example, try working for an EU government agency.... My patterns definitely fit the ones…
You don't need a free-forever plan to make those decisions, in these cases, just a sufficiently long timed-trial.