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Ask HN: Tricks for choosing which features to charge for?
In a freemium app, do you have any tricks to help you decide which features to include in the paid tier vs. the free tier?
Sometimes there aren't easy distinctions like storage limits, number of "projects" allowed, etc. Given a bucket of arbitrary features, how would you choose which to include in the premium tier?
Obviously, it's easier to "free" a feature than to start charging once it has already been free.
- makecheck 17y agoAs a consumer, I like being able to at least try any feature, no matter what tier it's on. Just make it clear when something is a trial, as opposed to permanently free. There's nothing worse than having to pay $10 more per month, or whatever, only to find out that something isn't worth it.
- barmstrong 17y agoNot sure if this is what you meant, but an old fashioned free trial based on time (30 day free trial!) doesn't convert as well as a freemium based trial (first 100 subscribers free, after that $10/month) in my experience. The latter is a good way to let people try it while avoiding the ticking clock. I think the 30 (and 60) day free trials rub people the wrong way since so many were used for borderline scams over the years, hoping people would forget to cancel in time, etc.
- angelbob 17y agoAn old trick from shareware folks: pick features they won't want to use immediately, like going beyond a certain size/number of projects. That way you're only targeting people who already know your service is valuable to them (or isn't).
- csomar 17y agoPeople will pay for feature $x a month, if that features helps them boost their earnings $2x; think of that: which features can make your client richer? How much? and charge!
- wlievens 17y agoYou're discarding entertainment features, which is nontrivial when it comes to the webapp space.
- barmstrong 17y agoI struggled with this question as well in the past on UniversityTutor.com. Here are a few common ones from other sites that I looked at. Maybe the right one will jump out. number of photos, highlighted listing (AutoTrader) storage space (Evernote) top listing in search results (Google) top listing in search results, larger listing/photo, more photos (Haystack.com) number of projects, ssl, storage (Basecamp) number of faxes sent (FaxZero.com) number of subscribers (Aweber.com) Pro Badge, storage, num photos (Flickr) receive messages but can't reply (Match.com) send messages to full inboxes, racy photos, other stuff (OkCupid) If you don't mind sharing the app we could probably come up with some other ideas too. If you literally just have a laundry list of features, then yeah maybe the best and most useful ones you give away free, and the ones power users will want you can make paid. That is the heart of the freemium model I think: a causal user who might find it useful once a month should be able to use it free, and spread the word for you. A power user who is logging in almost daily, or making money from it (for business), etc should be a paid user.