I 100% disagree. I hate service trials based on days. I can’t be bothered to properly evaluate DataDog in 30 days. I have a job to do. I set up the trial span a little time trying to learn the product. Get pulled of it. Come back to find it locked out. Trials should be measured in hours used, not days activated.
Don't Offer a Free Plan
211–220 of 232 posts
Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan
#212Anecdata: 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.…
You recommended JIRA? To someone that you don't hate?
If you use it as a full project management tool it can be a bit painful, but is there a better tool you’d recommend for someone who just wants a good bug tracker?
Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan
#213One concept I like is the Premium plan that gives lifetime access to all features but only updates for one year. It can act as both the old-school software purchase or subscription depending on what the user prefers.
That works for standalone/installable software but not for hosted/cloud-based services as keeping every version running alongside each other forever would be a nightmare!
Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan
#214It's so sad that micropayments are still not a thing after all these years, still think they would solve a huge range of problems including eliminating the need for many sites to be dependent upon ads
Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan
#215Anecdata: 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 used to offer a free plan on https://pdf2qrcode.com but not anymore since it costs to have free users and I did not see any conversions into a paid plan. Replaced with a 60 day free trial and it gets the job done.
Hi, could you please elaborate on “it costs to have free users”? What kind of costs?
Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan
#216It's so sad that micropayments are still not a thing after all these years, still think they would solve a huge range of problems including eliminating the need for many sites to be dependent upon ads
Having personally worked on micropayment infrastructure (when dinosaurs were still roaming the earth) and thought about pricing and value and incentives, I suspect micropayments may actually disincentivize product use.
Let's say your digital asset manager used per-view micropayments. Browsing through your photos would be soured, however slightly, by the cheapskate voice in your head, wouldn't it?
What product would want their user experience to be saddled with that cloud?
(Or am I just an extreme cheapskate?)
Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan
#217Disagree... free tiers are crucial especially for conversion to enterprise (where the big bucks are)
Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan
#218This 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…
Hum, Google is a bad example, Google doesn't have a free plan. They monetize their users. It is a complete different topic
You're incorrect. Gmail, Sheets, Docs and Slides all have free plans as well as paid (Google Suite) plans. Google Drive also has a free plan as well as paid upgrades.
This is also precisely the point - in Google's case, they find a way to monetize their free users in addition to selling paid plans. The author totally fails to consider that possibility along with any others that might make free plans viable.
Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> My patterns definitely fit the ones described. 95% of the time, I create an account, and nothing comes of it: You don't need a free-forever plan to make those decisions, in these cases, just a sufficiently long timed-trial.
... assuming I never work on another project again, switch jobs, or fail to get around to evaluating your tool during the two weeks.
I've exhausted enough 2-week trials to know.
And at the same time, I'm hesitant to start them, since once they're gone, they're gone. You want minimal friction. Two clicks, and I'm using your tool. Yes, lower friction decreases your conversion rate, but that's because more people who aren't sure will try your tool.
Re: Don't Offer a Free Plan
#220One problem that I see with SaaS vendors (and I am working on my own SaaS), is that some of them are delirious with their pricings, in my humble opinion. For example Duolingo. Love Duolingo. My kids use it. So we want to support them, but that means paying 120 euros per year per kid (240 euros!), so we use the free option. If they had a plan that was, I don't know, 1 euro per person per month, we will gladly pay 4 eu…
> If they had a plan that was, I don't know, 1 euro per person per month
If you're building your own SaaS you will quickly realize it's very difficult to build a sustainable business if you only charge 1 euro/month.
I just looked up the price of Duolingo [0]. It looks like it's only ~6 euros/month not 10, but think about the difference in revenue between 6 euros and 1 euro.
You need 6x as many customers at 1 euro/month to make the same amount of money!