11–20 of 267 posts
All because they took VC money and now they are under pressure to start acting like a business and ‘make money’ instead of burning it for so-called ‘free forever’ deals that age like milk.
I agree. Random thought but > that age like milk. Isn't aged milk cheese?
I wonder if they ever compared the price of AWS hosting and just renting a rack at a colocation facility. One way of thinking about this is that "free" isn't "enterprise" and while you would love to have them convert, hosting free users on a rack with a 500MB Cogent IP transport contract can be had for < $2K/month. So $24K a year. Is it a "teir-1" data center? no. Does it have failure redundancy? no. Is there a risk…
This blog post is from the "never let a competitor's mistake go unnoticed" school of thought.
Not sure I totally agree. Capitalizing on a competitors mistake is kind of slimy; calling out their poor business practices is not. Users will invest their time and resources into using your product based on the promise that it’s free forever. Changing your mind later puts the burden on them to figure out how to move forward. Even if I was a free user and I was considering a paid plan that type of dishonesty would ma…
This reminds me of the love/hate relationship I have with the Fusion 360 free tier, and maybe even some paid tiers where lifetime is not really lifetime.
All because they took VC money and now they are under pressure to start acting like a business and ‘make money’ instead of burning it for so-called ‘free forever’ deals that age like milk.
I agree. Random thought but > that age like milk. Isn't aged milk cheese?
I wonder if they ever compared the price of AWS hosting and just renting a rack at a colocation facility. One way of thinking about this is that "free" isn't "enterprise" and while you would love to have them convert, hosting free users on a rack with a 500MB Cogent IP transport contract can be had for < $2K/month. So $24K a year. Is it a "teir-1" data center? no. Does it have failure redundancy? no. Is there a risk…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure I totally agree. Capitalizing on a competitors mistake is kind of slimy; calling out their poor business practices is not. Users will invest their time and resources into using your product based on the promise that it’s free forever. Changing your mind later puts the burden on them to figure out how to move forward. Even if I was a free user and I was considering a paid plan that type of dishonesty would ma…
They should at least grandfathered any users on the -free forever- plan
Sure, it's inherently a tech/financial/support load to maintain a special category of customer, but I don't see it as fundamentally any different from a successful company managing the discontinuation of a popular product. You cut off new customers, let attrition take its course for the existing ones, and take your lumps from any high-value/high-touch customers who drag their feet on moving to the new thing. It's work, but so is climbing a ladder. Do you want to elevate the company or not?
I wonder if they ever compared the price of AWS hosting and just renting a rack at a colocation facility. One way of thinking about this is that "free" isn't "enterprise" and while you would love to have them convert, hosting free users on a rack with a 500MB Cogent IP transport contract can be had for < $2K/month. So $24K a year. Is it a "teir-1" data center? no. Does it have failure redundancy? no. Is there a risk…
1- hope users will upgrade to paid plans
2- hope free users will spread name recognition through word of mouth to people who will pay
Generally speaking, "free tier" users are the worst- they demand more from support and expect to give nothing in return. Very few transition to paid users.
What happens if you give your free tier users a degraded experience compared to paid users? They'll complain that your service is slow, loses their data and is a terrible product. You're shooting yourself in the foot, because you'll get no fewer upgrades and a terrible reputation.
Even if you try to communicate that the free tier doesn't have the stability or performance of a paid plan, if I experience the free tier and am unhappy with it, you've raised the bar considerably for meeting my expectations for the paid plan. I'm more likely to pay for a competitor than pay for your product in the hopes that it'll improve.
This blog post is from the "never let a competitor's mistake go unnoticed" school of thought.