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Why we ditched our free plan

blog.trak.io

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Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#41

Post by pknight »

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…

This happens so often.

It's not just in the freemium space either. I've seen companies use affiliate programs and low-ish prices in their early days, only to dump the affiliate program and price model after they have garnered enough success and momentum.

The pr they put out will chime about creating a sustainable business and it being good for the users. They will harp on how it's impossible to run the business without making the changes. Ideally, they try to play on guilt for haven given their userbase such a good deal or how bad affiliates had given them so much trouble.

They do not talk about the fact that the strategies they employed that helped them be successful early on weren't dumb "mistakes", but simply ways to get momentum. In other words, they were using the users to propel a business. The right thing to do is to reward your early users (and affiliates if that is the case). Making parts of your userbase out to be a 'freeloader' just exposes a certain mindset some entrepreneurs have toward their users.

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#42

Post by rsobers »

liamgooding wrote: post #29
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 guy…

Why don't you grandfather in your current free users and shut off the plan? That seems totally fair.

At present, it seems like bait and switch. You say it yourself in the post:

"One of the most prominent details we emphasized to everyone we spoke to in the early days of Trak.io was that we would offer a super generous Free plan."

So you got people to try and test your product based on this attractive premise, and now the ones who are perhaps too early stage to switch to a paid plan are stuck. With an analytics app, switching costs are pretty high.

Of course you have the ability to iterate, increase prices, etc.--and you should--I just think it should be done with a little more tact.

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#43

Post by prof_hobart »

To me it looks like the mistake it looks like you made wasn't offering a free product. It was offering ".. a super generous Free plan. A free plan so generous that an average funded startup would very rarely outgrow it.".

One reason for giving away free accounts is that lone hobby developers can very quickly become founders of rather bigger startups. These lone hobby developers are likely to only be interested in free - $9/month is a fairly big investment for someone just doing a hobby. The second it becomes a real business, on the other hand, that $9 is likely to look quite different. On a very note, I work for a pretty large organisation and have quite a lot of input in product choices. I also tinker around with stuff in my spare time. I definitely won't be paying you $9/month for my tinkering, and so I'll never get to know if it's something I'd want to recommend for consideration for my organisation. And I doubt I'm unique in this kind of position.

The trick is to make the free stuff only good enough for those people who would never pay for it anyway (allowing people who could become customers in the future a chance to get used to your product), and make stuff that would be critical to any real user - such as access to support, ability to support multiple users or whatever - only available to your paying customers. Otherwise, you run the risk of chasing off a lot of potential future business.

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#44

Post by rhizome »

liamgooding wrote: post #32
tigroferoce wrote: post #22

Do you realise that in the upper right corner of the page you linked there a link titled "Try Track.io For Free"?

Original author here. Yeah but the subtle wording in that CTA is "Try". We have a totally free, no credit card required, 30 day free trial :-) Something which I probably need to point out in my original article, my bad

It sounds like you're making a lot of mistakes from not thinking things through. Do you really care about your business?

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#45

Post by notastartup »

I think this article has merit but it fails to consider that free users may eventually upgrade to a paying account.

Would it have been better to not offer a free plan to begin with? Instead have a 14 day money back guarantee with each plan. People with money and with intention will only use the product. If they don't like it they will probably ask for a refund but not many people actually do in reality because of the hassle.

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#46

Post by luckystrike »

liamgooding wrote: post #21
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...

Could you please remove the obnoxious photo of the woman's ass on Slide #5? You can probably spread the "Our product is sexy" message in a much better way.

These kind of images make a lot of females in the programming community feel uncomfortable and it's better if we don't have them in any work related presentations.

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#47

Post by microcolonel »

liamgooding wrote: post #18
microcolonel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, in simplifying it this far, you run the risk of losing some subtleties of the situation. Users can be valuable without offering net revenue on their own, this is how Github stays afloat, it's at the core of their business model.

Interesting point on Github! In their case, it's like "Free for when you'r working on your own personal passion stuff, but it's paid when you go into the office and hack on your companies private code". The huge community and discussion is essentially a massive funnel, users already have an account, etc. There's actually some potential parallels with Trak.io and I'm definitely going to keep Github on my whiteboard as…

Right, having a look at trak.io(had no idea you existed) I can say that mass freemium may not be the best business model for you. Although you could try offering some separate service adjunct to trak which would offer value to everyone, with minimal cost to yourself at any scale.

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#48

Post by bitJericho »

prof_hobart wrote: post #43

To me it looks like the mistake it looks like you made wasn't offering a free product. It was offering ".. a super generous Free plan. A free plan so generous that an average funded startup would very rarely outgrow it.". One reason for giving away free accounts is that lone hobby developers can very quickly become founders of rather bigger startups. These lone hobby developers are likely to only be interested in fre…

Zarafa springs to my mind.

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#49

Post by stormbrew »

SethMurphy wrote: post #3

Google analytics was originally Urchin, and If I remember correctly it was 49.95 a month. I heard about it from a friend and started paying for it. A few months later Google bought them and it was suddenly free. It felt like picking a good stock and the feeling of going from paid to free was elating. I say this not as a well actually (ironically it is), but to support that if you have a good product people will pay a…

I actually really miss the original Urchin. And server-log analytics in general, which is an area that's stagnated a lot in favour of tracking from the client.

Re: Why we ditched our free plan

#50

Post by mbrameld »

liamgooding wrote: post #39
evgen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are mostly being downvoted because they are apparently real dicks. This "I made a mistake so there is obviously a problem with you" attitude they display here and in the post in question shows a level of immaturity that puts them in the running for d-bag company of the year.

Seems a harsh, unfair and hasty assessment considering you've never met anyone in our team or spoken to any of our users.... :-/

You control the public's perception of your company. You chose to write this post and put it out there, but you feel it's unfair for people to judge your company based on what you've written? That seems a little naive.
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