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Asking for credit card details on a free trial is going to be a stopper for new users.

by santialbo 9y ago

chatmasta 9y ago
Clearly it wasn’t a show stopper for all their existing users, who are now paying two engineers their salaries.
- santialbo 9y ago
  Well, it was for me. I read the blog post and decided I wanted to try it until I had to add my cc details on the sign up form. If you are providing a one month free trial why on earth do you need them?
  - chatmasta 9y ago
    To protect against users creating a new account each month. To be fair, though, I’m largely in agreement with you in this case. For products like cloud infrastructure, where the company is fronting real costs, the requirement makes sense to prevent abuse. But this product has low marginal cost per user, and also loses all of its value if a user recreates his account.
    - santialbo 9y ago
      Why would I do so? the nice thing about this is to have the historical of data. If I created a new account I would have to start over. Unless, of course, you could import historial data somehow. But then maybe just make that feature not available on trial.
      - chatmasta 9y ago
        Exactly; that’s why I’m agreeing with you for this particular service. This was what I was referring to when I said the product “loses all of its value if a user recreates his account.”
chrisseaton 9y ago
It's pretty normal to ask for credit card details for a free trial. For example major services like Netflix do it.
- santialbo 9y ago
  You are comparing this service I've never heard about before with a service everyone knows. I think there's a little difference there.
tomhoward 9y ago
I know the founders of this company (we live in the same city). I've seen how much hard work and emotional energy they've put into their product over at least 4 years. And I've observed them go through a whole lot of different experiments on how to optimise their on-boarding process for new customers. I can tell you that their current signup process has been tested and optimised to within an inch of its life, in order to get the outcome they want, which is to attract users who are serious about using the product and will be happy to pay for it as soon as they're convinced it does what they need. As the article says and as another commenter pointed out, they now make enough money to pay both founders a modest monthly wage. They don't sell advertising in the app, they don't sell your data, and they haven't taken funding. Every cent they make is from people who love their product. Please believe me when I tell you they really don't mind when people are turned off by the requirement to enter payment details.

Asking for credit card details on a free trial is going to be a stopper for new users.

chatmasta 9y ago

Clearly it wasn’t a show stopper for all their existing users, who are now paying two engineers their salaries.

santialbo 9y ago
Well, it was for me. I read the blog post and decided I wanted to try it until I had to add my cc details on the sign up form. If you are providing a one month free trial why on earth do you need them?
- chatmasta 9y ago
  To protect against users creating a new account each month. To be fair, though, I’m largely in agreement with you in this case. For products like cloud infrastructure, where the company is fronting real costs, the requirement makes sense to prevent abuse. But this product has low marginal cost per user, and also loses all of its value if a user recreates his account.
  - santialbo 9y ago
    Why would I do so? the nice thing about this is to have the historical of data. If I created a new account I would have to start over. Unless, of course, you could import historial data somehow. But then maybe just make that feature not available on trial.
    - chatmasta 9y ago
      Exactly; that’s why I’m agreeing with you for this particular service. This was what I was referring to when I said the product “loses all of its value if a user recreates his account.”

chrisseaton 9y ago

It's pretty normal to ask for credit card details for a free trial. For example major services like Netflix do it.

santialbo 9y ago
You are comparing this service I've never heard about before with a service everyone knows. I think there's a little difference there.

tomhoward 9y ago

I know the founders of this company (we live in the same city). I've seen how much hard work and emotional energy they've put into their product over at least 4 years. And I've observed them go through a whole lot of different experiments on how to optimise their on-boarding process for new customers. I can tell you that their current signup process has been tested and optimised to within an inch of its life, in order to get the outcome they want, which is to attract users who are serious about using the product and will be happy to pay for it as soon as they're convinced it does what they need. As the article says and as another commenter pointed out, they now make enough money to pay both founders a modest monthly wage. They don't sell advertising in the app, they don't sell your data, and they haven't taken funding. Every cent they make is from people who love their product. Please believe me when I tell you they really don't mind when people are turned off by the requirement to enter payment details.