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enough is enough with free products. I get freemium but this always turns into a messed up incentive structure where the service perceives no obligation to thei

enough is enough with free products. I get freemium but this always turns into a messed up incentive structure where the service perceives no obligation to their bottom-tier users and they have to do something filthy to them to make money. how about cheap-mium instead? keep the lights on with breakeven service. half the appeal of freemium is that account signup and electronic payments are still pain points. Solve those problems and freemium's advantage narrows. There's an uncomfortable parallel here with nation-states. Finland can afford to provide high-quality free education because their 'freemium mix' (i.e. tax base) is a healthy normal distribution. Not naming any names, but in 'freemium' countries where the GDP centers on top earners, there's tremendous tension about providing basic services and quality declines. Point being: freemium is a bad model if your community structure is wrong and incentivizes a bad community structure even if you start out right.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> how about cheap-mium instead? keep the lights on with breakeven service. It can be done, but you'll be growth limited, so its a lifestyle business (I say this in a positive sense, a business you can casually run and you enjoy running is far superior to the pressure of a VC-backed growth-at-all-costs firm). Someone just needs to care enough to do it.
simonswords82 11y ago
So while I understand what you're saying I guess that (but I don't know for sure) Charlie HR have been spurred on by the likes of Zenefits - a company that offers free HR software and generates revenue from the provision of benefits to an American audience. Zenefits is crazy successful, so it makes sense that a company would try to replicate that business model here in the UK. We don't do benefits the way Americans do, so pensions is the logical starting point as the government has just introduced legislation around pensions forcing small businesses to adopt them when before it was optional.
josh_carterPDX 11y ago
I can see this becoming a very lengthy debate about the pros and cons of a freemium model, but the point I think is that many new companies offer this to help get their product into the hands of people who may otherwise shy away from them. I agree with you that it provides no incentive for companies to support their bottom-tier users, but if those same users find value in the service they eventually become paying customers who are confident on the platform and more likely to do business with them long-term. It's a marketing thing more than anything else. Not unlike drug dealers. Give em a taste and you'll get em hooked. :)

toomuchtodo 11y ago

> how about cheap-mium instead? keep the lights on with breakeven service. It can be done, but you'll be growth limited, so its a lifestyle business (I say this in a positive sense, a business you can casually run and you enjoy running is far superior to the pressure of a VC-backed growth-at-all-costs firm). Someone just needs to care enough to do it.

simonswords82 11y ago

So while I understand what you're saying I guess that (but I don't know for sure) Charlie HR have been spurred on by the likes of Zenefits - a company that offers free HR software and generates revenue from the provision of benefits to an American audience. Zenefits is crazy successful, so it makes sense that a company would try to replicate that business model here in the UK. We don't do benefits the way Americans do, so pensions is the logical starting point as the government has just introduced legislation around pensions forcing small businesses to adopt them when before it was optional.

josh_carterPDX 11y ago

I can see this becoming a very lengthy debate about the pros and cons of a freemium model, but the point I think is that many new companies offer this to help get their product into the hands of people who may otherwise shy away from them. I agree with you that it provides no incentive for companies to support their bottom-tier users, but if those same users find value in the service they eventually become paying customers who are confident on the platform and more likely to do business with them long-term. It's a marketing thing more than anything else. Not unlike drug dealers. Give em a taste and you'll get em hooked. :)