4 ms·

Cool, by way of a quick survey on HN, how much would you pay in a cheaper tier?

by yaseer 6y ago

dotancohen 6y ago
You're not asking me, but if home users are a target market then it would have to be $1 - $3 dollars per month. I could imagine scraping local events websites, banks, maybe online auctions, etc. When home users subscribed to one or two services, we could get away with $10 monthly. Now, with home users accustomed to $1 apps and subscribing to a dozen different services, $3 is about the maximum before signups drop significantly.
- yaseer 6y ago
  On a public forum the question was open to anyone - thanks for sharing your thoughts! There does seem to be a strong argument to introduce a cheaper tier for consumer use-cases.
  - p0sixlang 6y ago
    You could charge based on some metric of use, as opposed to an all you can eat style charge. $50 is very prohibitive if I used this to automate a task that'll earn me $20/month.
    - yaseer 6y ago
      There's definitely going to be a usage based metric to pricing in the long-run. The problem now is that the obvious metric ('bot runs') is too crude for a DIY bot-builder, and may stop users during development. It's very likely our pricing system will evolve to resemble zapier's multiple tiers - they have the closest business model to ours. We're basically "The Zapier of RPA".
- soneca 6y ago
  I would say it is impossible to make any business model work charging $1 to $3 per month.
  - vntok 6y ago
    $3/mo is $36/year, most templates on themeforest and other platforms are around that price and they are selling fine. Considering the code is running on the user's side, the marginal cost for low-tier customers is probably minimal.
  - dotancohen 6y ago
    Though I disagree with "impossible" I will mention that those $1 - $3 customers will likely have an order of magnitude more support costs. Business users will be people who can figure things out. Home users ask constant questions and require constant babysitting.
ukulele 6y ago
If you're considering a really low price point like $5/mo, you might be better suited charging businesses more and then having a free tier that's restricted to personal use in some way (e.g. license or no collaboration)

Cool, by way of a quick survey on HN, how much would you pay in a cheaper tier?

by yaseer 6y ago

Cool, by way of a quick survey on HN, how much would you pay in a cheaper tier?

You're not asking me, but if home users are a target market then it would have to be $1 - $3 dollars per month. I could imagine scraping local events websites, banks, maybe online auctions, etc. When home users subscribed to one or two services, we could get away with $10 monthly. Now, with home users accustomed to $1 apps and subscribing to a dozen different services, $3 is about the maximum before signups drop significantly.

yaseer 6y ago
On a public forum the question was open to anyone - thanks for sharing your thoughts! There does seem to be a strong argument to introduce a cheaper tier for consumer use-cases.
- p0sixlang 6y ago
  You could charge based on some metric of use, as opposed to an all you can eat style charge. $50 is very prohibitive if I used this to automate a task that'll earn me $20/month.
  - yaseer 6y ago
    There's definitely going to be a usage based metric to pricing in the long-run. The problem now is that the obvious metric ('bot runs') is too crude for a DIY bot-builder, and may stop users during development. It's very likely our pricing system will evolve to resemble zapier's multiple tiers - they have the closest business model to ours. We're basically "The Zapier of RPA".
soneca 6y ago
I would say it is impossible to make any business model work charging $1 to $3 per month.
- vntok 6y ago
  $3/mo is $36/year, most templates on themeforest and other platforms are around that price and they are selling fine. Considering the code is running on the user's side, the marginal cost for low-tier customers is probably minimal.
- dotancohen 6y ago
  Though I disagree with "impossible" I will mention that those $1 - $3 customers will likely have an order of magnitude more support costs. Business users will be people who can figure things out. Home users ask constant questions and require constant babysitting.

ukulele 6y ago

If you're considering a really low price point like $5/mo, you might be better suited charging businesses more and then having a free tier that's restricted to personal use in some way (e.g. license or no collaboration)