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>(though I'm phasing that plan out). Would you recomend starting something with a free tier and phasing it out if it's not working over charging up front from
by alex_hitchins 10y ago
>(though I'm phasing that plan out).
Would you recomend starting something with a free tier and phasing it out if it's not working over charging up front from the beginning?
I can see pros/cons to both sides.
- wwalser 10y agoI've been looking into myself recently. From successful bootstrappers in B2B, nearly 100% of the advice that I've gotten is to start without free and add it later as a lead-gen mechanism if it fits your business. Early on customer acquisition is a slog and generally relies on 1:1 conversations often with a pre-existing relationship (in-network). Hopefully feedback from these people help you get close enough to product market fit that outsiders will consider using the product. From there it's a marketing and lead nurturing game where freemium may make sense. Advice for B2C would be quite different.
- tjholowaychuk 10y agoI think it depends greatly on the cost of supporting the free plans, mine just went a little out of control, I was getting ~100 or more users per day. If it was really cheap to support them it might be worth the marketing side of things. And of course for VC backed companies this still looks more attractive than not having the free users at all.