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Why we ditched our free plan

blog.trak.io

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Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#21

Post by liamgooding »

AhtiK wrote: post #20

"After introducing our $29 Priority Access program, offering Beta waiting list subscribers an instant queue jump, we started to see a huge shift in our customer development. Features that we’d previously emphasized because everyone said they were ‘cool’ no longer came up in conversations." This "Priority Access Program" is pure genius for filtering and validation! I haven't seen that much outgoing method before but I…

Thanks!

I did a full write up (with data correct at that time) as a guest post on Sixteen Ventures blog:

http://sixteenventures.com/pre-launch-growth-hacking

TLDR: here's the slideshare version, much shorter:

http://www.slideshare.net/liamgooding/growth-hacking-prelaun...

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#23

Post by marincounty »

Why not just start charging? If people can't live without your app, won't they just buy it? I'm glad I read your blog;it reaffirmed an old saying. The more someone tries to sell their product, or explain how brilliant they are--the more skeptical I become. I don't know why this blog irritated me, but this company made it to HN; which just might be better than charging the Free Loaders.

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#24

Post by rsobers »

Wow, this is the absolute wrong way to ditch a free plan. Holy shit!

The post comes off really condescending towards the beta users that helped get the product off the ground.

Sure, the business lessons are valid and helpful (despite being a complete regurgitation of advice espoused by people like Rob Walling and Patrick McKenzie), but IMO they don't belong in the same post that tells a cohort of your very first users:

"Yeah, we needed you in the beginning to test our idea and product, but now you're a burden. Get lost."

Grandfather your free plan beta customers in. It's the right thing to do. The free plan, IIRC, had a really low ceiling in the amount of data that could be collected--like 150 people or something silly.

Lessons for SaaS founders: 1.) Don't have a free plan. 2.) Don't set an expectation that there will be a free plan to get more early testers. 3.) Don't ever refer to any of your customers (free or not) like they're a number in a spreadsheet.

(Is it just me, or is the trak.io blog theme eerily similar to Signal v. Noise?)

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#25

Post by berkay »

liamgooding wrote: post #6
gabemart wrote: post #4

I would suggest that you don't call your free users "freeloaders". That's a pejorative term that suggests you're being taken advantage of. You offered your product for free, they took you up on the offer. It's fine that you've decided it's better for your business to cease offering the free tier, but it's unprofessional to use a pejorative to describe customers who accepted your offer of a free product.

Hey Gabemart, original author here. I understand your objection. The term 'freeloader' was used because they're taking stuff for free with no expectation to pay anything in the future. Also, an article that attracts discussion is a good thing, right? :) [edited]

An article attracts discussion is good? sure. I did not know about trak.io, now I do. The attitude in the article towards "freeloaders"? not so good. I won't argue whether it is better or not to have a freemium for "your" company. But commitment should not be broken so nonchalantly. Did you at least grandfather beta customers to a free plan? If not, you did a bait and switch, and that does not make me wanna do business with you (and I would have become a paying customer).

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#26

Post by rsobers »

liamgooding wrote: post #6
gabemart wrote: post #4

I would suggest that you don't call your free users "freeloaders". That's a pejorative term that suggests you're being taken advantage of. You offered your product for free, they took you up on the offer. It's fine that you've decided it's better for your business to cease offering the free tier, but it's unprofessional to use a pejorative to describe customers who accepted your offer of a free product.

Hey Gabemart, original author here. I understand your objection. The term 'freeloader' was used because they're taking stuff for free with no expectation to pay anything in the future. Also, an article that attracts discussion is a good thing, right? :) [edited]

> The term 'freeloader' was used because they're taking stuff for free with no expectation to pay anything in the future.

You set this expectation yourself by offering a free plan, no?

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#27

Post by JoeAltmaier »

We have a free plan, but its limited. Ours is a communications product (sococo.com) and the free plan supports a small number of simultaneous users. Paid plans increase that limit.

We track plans carefully. A certain fraction stays in the free plan, keeps using it regularly, and that's fine. But another predictable fraction moves up. We can pretty much tell which fraction that will be - there's a critical mass of usage that takes off.

So our free plan is a money maker - every month it grows our revenue stream. We'll never get rid of it.

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#28

Post by dspillett »

liamgooding wrote: post #13
edanm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to note that I also disliked that term. And believe me, I couldn't agree with the article more, I was nodding my head vigorously throughout my reading, I bookmarked the article to Evernote as a reference for anyone I talk to about this in the future (and I talk about this with a lot of people, making exactly your arguments). So I couldn't be more "pro", but I also immediately thought "freeloader is not a…

Does a unicorn lose it's rainbow if I just go ahead and edit the original article? Never too sure once something has been discussed whether it's cool to revise the original source...

Make sure you clearly label the edited version as such (perhaps add a "revisions" section at the bottom listing each version and the changes between them like:

2014-04-14 @12:34: Original publication

2014-04-14 @17:00: Spelling and grammar fixes

2014-04-15 @13:00: Updated wording to avoid terms potentially seen as insulting

... ... ...

Better yet, include the earlier versions and link to them in that change log. This way you are improving the article yet there is no way (unless you deliberately skip bits in the changelog) people can legitimately accuse you of trying to brush things under the carpet (because everything you edited out to improve things is still there for all to see (and find easily) should they care).

Also make sure you add a message indicating "this is an older version of the article, see link for the latest revision" to the old versions so people coming in to the wrong place from a search result know where best to go.

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#29

Post by liamgooding »

rsobers wrote: post #24

Wow, this is the absolute wrong way to ditch a free plan. Holy shit! The post comes off really condescending towards the beta users that helped get the product off the ground. Sure, the business lessons are valid and helpful (despite being a complete regurgitation of advice espoused by people like Rob Walling and Patrick McKenzie), but IMO they don't belong in the same post that tells a cohort of your very first user…

Hey, original author here.

Haha Thanks for the point of view - yeah it's a big splash but there was no hiding the fact so we just wanted to be totally transparent about it.

So far the replies from all our beta users has been exactly what we hoped for (expected), either "Thanks for the honesty" or "Cool, we were just checking it out, we're not in a position to need something like this now" or a few "Yeah screw you guys, delete my account I'm not using you anymore".

I understand a lot of your points, but I strongly disagree that we're regurgitating other peoples advice. This is taken exactly from our experiences.

And we're not telling anyone to get lost. We're explaining why we had to evolve and change our assumptions. If we carried the burden of every mistake we'd made as a startup, within a year we'd be so heavy we wouldn't be able to move anywhere!!!

(Oh and the blog theme is following a trend of about 20+ major startup blogs who switched to a typography led, single column design. We rebuilt the design a few months ago and tried to make it as much about the content as possible. I personally think the end goal was more like eerily similar to reading an eBook?)

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#30

Post by liamgooding »

berkay wrote: post #25
liamgooding wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Gabemart, original author here. I understand your objection. The term 'freeloader' was used because they're taking stuff for free with no expectation to pay anything in the future. Also, an article that attracts discussion is a good thing, right? :) [edited]

An article attracts discussion is good? sure. I did not know about trak.io, now I do. The attitude in the article towards "freeloaders"? not so good. I won't argue whether it is better or not to have a freemium for "your" company. But commitment should not be broken so nonchalantly. Did you at least grandfather beta customers to a free plan? If not, you did a bait and switch, and that does not make me wanna do busine…

Hi, original author here.

Actually yes, all the beta users who are engaging in conversation with us over this are actually been offered free plans where it's appropriate anyway. i.e. open source projects, developers writing plugins, university/college students, developers testing Trak.io for their employers etc.

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