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When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

blog.zulip.com

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Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#121

Post by squeaky-clean »

zdragnar wrote: post #17
ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

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…

I'm pretty skeptical of this approach. There are generally two reasons to offer free tiers: 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 tie…

It reminds me of the game "Game Dev Tycoon", where they released a version on torrent sites where after about a year of ingame time your company would go bankrupt because of loss of profits due to piracy. The retail version of the game didn't even include piracy as a mechanic, it was just added as a joke in the torrent version.

Still, Twitter and Reddit discussions about the game were filled with "don't buy that game. It's impossible to play for more than an hour without going bankrupt". Of course none of those users admitted that they pirated the game, and word-of-mouth reviews of the game became "don't buy it, it's terribly balanced / unfair"

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#122

Post by squeaky-clean »

masfuerte wrote: post #54
wmf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your free plan is unreliable good luck converting users to paid though.

I have a tiny VPS that costs less than $2 per month. I run a chat server on it. In seven years it has had no failures and one hour of planned downtime. That's better than any of the major cloud services. Simple stuff is surprisingly reliable.

Mind sharing that chat server so that all of us can use it, still think it will be stable? ;)

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#123

Post by whuan »

nine_k wrote: post #93
swyx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver? i understand the outrage but remember the people on the other side of that screen are just humans too. many things dont turn out the way the initial intention was (im not excusing this specific instance, im just hoping for less vitriol when i someday make some over promising mistake in future). let he who i…

"Forever" is such a word which you should nit utter lightly, especially in the context of a service commitment. I see that mistakes are made, and they need to be fixed when they become obvious (usually other people have to fix them than the people who made them). But there's no expectation that making and fixing such a mistake should be free , without impact on reputation and customers' goodwill.

Can't agree more, especially true in terms of business

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#124

Post by jjav »

selcuka wrote: post #115
Sevii wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be illegal to offer 'free forever' plans and tiers. No company is actually capable of delivering on that promise. It's not a mistake if its blatantly obvious at the beginning that your company is unlikely to last forever.

> It should be illegal to offer 'free forever' plans and tiers. No company is actually capable of delivering on that promise. It is perfectly possible if your marginal cost is low/zero. The value of a product has nothing to do with its cost. The paying customers on higher tiers will easily subsidise the free for life plans. If you have no paying customers, well, then your product is at the end of its life anyway. I,…

> It should be illegal to offer 'free forever' plans and tiers. No company is actually capable of delivering on that promise.

> It is perfectly possible if your marginal cost is low/zero.

No, simply because no company or product is going to be around "forever". It's an impossible promise.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#125

Post by ipaddr »

Sevii wrote: post #103
swyx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver? i understand the outrage but remember the people on the other side of that screen are just humans too. many things dont turn out the way the initial intention was (im not excusing this specific instance, im just hoping for less vitriol when i someday make some over promising mistake in future). let he who i…

It should be illegal to offer 'free forever' plans and tiers. No company is actually capable of delivering on that promise. It's not a mistake if its blatantly obvious at the beginning that your company is unlikely to last forever.

2600 mag has been offering them for 30/40 years. Laracasts did and probably still does.

Stay away if it's paid from VC money.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#126

Post by selcuka »

jjav wrote: post #124
selcuka wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should be illegal to offer 'free forever' plans and tiers. No company is actually capable of delivering on that promise. It is perfectly possible if your marginal cost is low/zero. The value of a product has nothing to do with its cost. The paying customers on higher tiers will easily subsidise the free for life plans. If you have no paying customers, well, then your product is at the end of its life anyway. I,…

> It should be illegal to offer 'free forever' plans and tiers. No company is actually capable of delivering on that promise. > It is perfectly possible if your marginal cost is low/zero. No, simply because no company or product is going to be around "forever". It's an impossible promise.

> No, simply because no company or product is going to be around "forever". It's an impossible promise.

Real world customers are actually smarter and they don't take words literally. They know that contracts don't mean anything once one of the parties is not around.

By the same logic making annual contracts should also be illegal because there is no guarantee that your company or product will be around until next year.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#127

Post by tasuki »

_HMCB_ wrote: post #51

“We fully expect to continue offering the Zulip Cloud Free plan indefinitely” doesn’t exactly garner confidence from an article written by a competitor. SMH.

From my point of view there's a world of difference between "we fully expect to continue offering free indefinitely" and "free forever". In the first case, they talk about their expectations, while the second case is a promise. Also "indefinitely" means that the end is unknown, not that it's forever.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#128

Post by reacharavindh »

It was amusing to read the end of the blog post with this.

> We fully expect to continue offering the Zulip Cloud Free plan indefinitely, and are excited to empower effective collaboration for teams large and small.

Until when? “Sorry, we are going to take away that “indefinitely” plan next month”?

The “free forever”, and “truly unlimited” like statements should just be banned.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#129

Post by adrianN »

reacharavindh wrote: post #128

It was amusing to read the end of the blog post with this. > We fully expect to continue offering the Zulip Cloud Free plan indefinitely, and are excited to empower effective collaboration for teams large and small. Until when? “Sorry, we are going to take away that “indefinitely” plan next month”? The “free forever”, and “truly unlimited” like statements should just be banned.

Why ban those statements if you can regulate them to truly mean what they mean? Have companies set up the appropriate legal structures and funds to ensure the service can continue beyond the lifetime of the company.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#130

Post by j16sdiz »

nocoiner wrote: post #52
donatj wrote: post #18

Is there ground for legal action, particularly if you depended on this? It seems like a contract of sorts, and if any of their sales people ever assured anyone it was "free forever" I think that becomes a verbal contact.

I’m a lawyer. I think a reasonably competently drafted terms of service could obviate most legal exposure. In the event that a promissory estoppel cause of action was established (like other posters have, I think, correctly noted, but which would also be an expensive affirmative burden to prove in court) then the plaintiff would still have to prove damages. And what is that, $10 per month per user for the affected pe…

I guess you can at least claim the cost for migrating off the platform, no?
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