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My experience too. ALWAYS have a lifetime free plan. It's okay to make it a useless lifetime free plan (your data disappears every 2 weeks; you have a 3 email

My experience too. ALWAYS have a lifetime free plan. It's okay to make it a useless lifetime free plan (your data disappears every 2 weeks; you have a 3 email per day quota; etc.). It just need to be enough to seriously evaluate your product, and if it has APIs, to develop to them. There are sometimes good reasons to do more, and sometimes not. But that's the minimum. In the early days of AWS, I would build thing on AWS' free tier, and they turned into products later. One product is making AWS millions (literally). AWS lost out when I changed orgs, my one-year free tier quota was gone, and I couldn't do the same at future orgs. At big organizations, the overhead of a PO is sufficient that you don't do it unless you have a compelling business case. Free plan allows you to build a business case over a weekend. I've gone free->paid many times. It's worth noting the figures here. The case for a free plan is much more compelling for a Fortune 500 company who will sign a million-dollar contract than for a small business.

IMTDb 6y ago
Me experience is the exact opposite. As a user: - If I need the service and only intend to use it for a very small project, I love forever free plans. Because I know I can subscribe use your server time and forget my account forever. I often subscribe with a temp email so that I don't even receive your emails anymore. - If I seriously need the service and is ready to pay for it, I don't really care about the free forever plan vs free trial vs paid trial. As a business: - Any time I have offered a free forever plan, basically 95% of the created accounts are dormant free accounts (like I personally am when I find the correct tool to scratch my itch). 4% are from people (usually from south east asia) creating hundreds/thousands of accounts (sometimes manually !) to circumvent the free plan limitations instead of just paying for the service. And 1% are from legitimate users/customers. - People in the 95 and 4% categories still believe they are owed support. And if you don't give them an easy way to let them contact you, they now have twitter and facebook and business reviews websites to get to you. On top of emails, LinkedIn messages and yes, phone calls. - Cutting the free accounts has almost no impact on real customers acquisition. You can let people experience your product with a temporary trial, that includes support and way more features, but behind the credit card screen. Extend the free trial as much as needed if people ask for it through your usual support channel. You will still get abusers but those are easier to detect, because they need to provide some payment details which are harder to fake, and after you shut them down for the third time in a row, they usually go away.
- dwild 6y ago
  > Any time I have offered a free forever plan, basically 95% of the created accounts are dormant free accounts (like I personally am when I find the correct tool to scratch my itch). What's the issue? Unused account shouldn't be a big spending. If it become one, take a bit of time to change it a bit (delete data/stop service after a set amount of inactivity) and use that occasion to send them an email that remind them that your service exist.
- derefr 6y ago
  How do you feel about a free-forever plan behind a credit card screen? Google Cloud is this way: stay below their free usage limits for some services and you'll never need to pay; but you need to give them your card up-front because it's a post-paid service and they need to ensure they can charge you if-and-when you do go over those limits. Or, for another approach: how about a plan that's free, but where there's a small one-time fee on signup, regardless of the plan you choose? (You can be upfront to your users and tell them it's a KYC measure, if you like.) Or, how about a free service, but gated with a real KYC/AML process on signup (of the "sign in through your bank" or "upload your driver's license to this third party" variety.) Any of these approaches, IMHO, would filter out the 4% of spammers; and also act as a barrier to anyone who isn't serious about eventually trying the service — while not being as much of a barrier to people like the GP poster, who take five months to get around to testing a service before becoming a diehard fan of it, and don't want to be paying for those five months, but also look in apprehension at the idea of possibly having to spend time trying to get their (as-yet-unused) trial extended.
  - brewdad 6y ago
    This might work in a B2B relationship but as an individual, there is no site on earth that is getting me to give you my bank account or driver's license info as part of a "free" or "trial" plan. Maybe. MAYBE. I'll give you a credit card number since I know I can always dispute/chargeback if you turn out to be dishonest. No way do you get anything that can't be 100% undone within a few minutes.
    - 6y ago
hinkley 6y ago
This sounds like a case of a free plan makes sense when the target for the free plan is someone without purchasing authority looking for leverage. > Would you rather have 10 users that pay $100 monthly, or 1,000 users that pay $1? I think this question is meant as an illustration but perhaps it hints at a rule of thumb. Let me substitute a different question and see what you think: Do you want 1000 users paying $500 a month, or 5 million users paying a $1 a month? 5 million suggests a broad but shallow appeal to the app, and I don't doubt at all that the author has seen customers exhibit all of the listed behaviors - and more. But perhaps an application with a narrow but deep appeal makes sense with a free tier. You can always expand the appeal of your product to reach more markets once you have a proven track record and word of mouth working for you. I would also say that at a minimum, if you don't let people test drive your application, you have to be quite skilled at creating demos and walkthroughs, and encourage third parties to do the same. Growing that kind of talent in house is probably too slow and unreliable. You're going to have to pay for at least one person to give you good advice.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  > This sounds like a case of a free plan makes sense when the target for the free plan is someone without purchasing authority looking for leverage. Well, that. Or somebody with leverage trying to reduce risks before jumping into a platform. Or somebody evaluating the options before deciding. Or somebody just making something the quickest way possible, leaving slow decisions for later... There are many cases that fit the same sequence. They do impose different requirements on the free tier, but I don't think you'll ever measure them well enough to discover what is what.
  - woofie11 6y ago
    > Or somebody evaluating the options before deciding. Or somebody just making something the quickest way possible, leaving slow decisions for later... This is exactly it. I've been both with and without purchasing authority. WITH purchasing authority, at many organizations, I still need paperwork and approvals. To give an extreme example, try working for an EU government agency.... My patterns definitely fit the ones described. 95% of the time, I create an account, and nothing comes of it: * I try five tools, and pick one. * I try five tools, and pick zero. * I do a weekend hackathon, and there is no business case * I do a weekend hackathon, there is a business case, but yours isn't the right product ... etc. But 5% of the time, there's a conversion, and with big orgs, quite often a big $$$ conversion. Those 95% cost you nearly nothing, or act as discovery (I rarely make a support call, but if I do make one, it's valuable to you). As a footnote, in many industries, you give actual, physical products which cost $$$ for free (e.g. an IC) for this reason. Some of these do put up gateways to make sure I'm from a place which might go from 1 sample to buying 10,000 (or an ed institution). I don't think those are a good fit, but I do think it's possible (and not too difficult) to screen out abuse in most cases.

IMTDb 6y ago

Me experience is the exact opposite. As a user: - If I need the service and only intend to use it for a very small project, I love forever free plans. Because I know I can subscribe use your server time and forget my account forever. I often subscribe with a temp email so that I don't even receive your emails anymore. - If I seriously need the service and is ready to pay for it, I don't really care about the free forever plan vs free trial vs paid trial. As a business: - Any time I have offered a free forever plan, basically 95% of the created accounts are dormant free accounts (like I personally am when I find the correct tool to scratch my itch). 4% are from people (usually from south east asia) creating hundreds/thousands of accounts (sometimes manually !) to circumvent the free plan limitations instead of just paying for the service. And 1% are from legitimate users/customers. - People in the 95 and 4% categories still believe they are owed support. And if you don't give them an easy way to let them contact you, they now have twitter and facebook and business reviews websites to get to you. On top of emails, LinkedIn messages and yes, phone calls. - Cutting the free accounts has almost no impact on real customers acquisition. You can let people experience your product with a temporary trial, that includes support and way more features, but behind the credit card screen. Extend the free trial as much as needed if people ask for it through your usual support channel. You will still get abusers but those are easier to detect, because they need to provide some payment details which are harder to fake, and after you shut them down for the third time in a row, they usually go away.

dwild 6y ago
> Any time I have offered a free forever plan, basically 95% of the created accounts are dormant free accounts (like I personally am when I find the correct tool to scratch my itch). What's the issue? Unused account shouldn't be a big spending. If it become one, take a bit of time to change it a bit (delete data/stop service after a set amount of inactivity) and use that occasion to send them an email that remind them that your service exist.
derefr 6y ago
How do you feel about a free-forever plan behind a credit card screen? Google Cloud is this way: stay below their free usage limits for some services and you'll never need to pay; but you need to give them your card up-front because it's a post-paid service and they need to ensure they can charge you if-and-when you do go over those limits. Or, for another approach: how about a plan that's free, but where there's a small one-time fee on signup, regardless of the plan you choose? (You can be upfront to your users and tell them it's a KYC measure, if you like.) Or, how about a free service, but gated with a real KYC/AML process on signup (of the "sign in through your bank" or "upload your driver's license to this third party" variety.) Any of these approaches, IMHO, would filter out the 4% of spammers; and also act as a barrier to anyone who isn't serious about eventually trying the service — while not being as much of a barrier to people like the GP poster, who take five months to get around to testing a service before becoming a diehard fan of it, and don't want to be paying for those five months, but also look in apprehension at the idea of possibly having to spend time trying to get their (as-yet-unused) trial extended.
- brewdad 6y ago
  This might work in a B2B relationship but as an individual, there is no site on earth that is getting me to give you my bank account or driver's license info as part of a "free" or "trial" plan. Maybe. MAYBE. I'll give you a credit card number since I know I can always dispute/chargeback if you turn out to be dishonest. No way do you get anything that can't be 100% undone within a few minutes.
  - 6y ago

hinkley 6y ago

This sounds like a case of a free plan makes sense when the target for the free plan is someone without purchasing authority looking for leverage. > Would you rather have 10 users that pay $100 monthly, or 1,000 users that pay $1? I think this question is meant as an illustration but perhaps it hints at a rule of thumb. Let me substitute a different question and see what you think: Do you want 1000 users paying $500 a month, or 5 million users paying a $1 a month? 5 million suggests a broad but shallow appeal to the app, and I don't doubt at all that the author has seen customers exhibit all of the listed behaviors - and more. But perhaps an application with a narrow but deep appeal makes sense with a free tier. You can always expand the appeal of your product to reach more markets once you have a proven track record and word of mouth working for you. I would also say that at a minimum, if you don't let people test drive your application, you have to be quite skilled at creating demos and walkthroughs, and encourage third parties to do the same. Growing that kind of talent in house is probably too slow and unreliable. You're going to have to pay for at least one person to give you good advice.

marcosdumay 6y ago
> This sounds like a case of a free plan makes sense when the target for the free plan is someone without purchasing authority looking for leverage. Well, that. Or somebody with leverage trying to reduce risks before jumping into a platform. Or somebody evaluating the options before deciding. Or somebody just making something the quickest way possible, leaving slow decisions for later... There are many cases that fit the same sequence. They do impose different requirements on the free tier, but I don't think you'll ever measure them well enough to discover what is what.
- woofie11 6y ago
  > Or somebody evaluating the options before deciding. Or somebody just making something the quickest way possible, leaving slow decisions for later... This is exactly it. I've been both with and without purchasing authority. WITH purchasing authority, at many organizations, I still need paperwork and approvals. To give an extreme example, try working for an EU government agency.... My patterns definitely fit the ones described. 95% of the time, I create an account, and nothing comes of it: * I try five tools, and pick one. * I try five tools, and pick zero. * I do a weekend hackathon, and there is no business case * I do a weekend hackathon, there is a business case, but yours isn't the right product ... etc. But 5% of the time, there's a conversion, and with big orgs, quite often a big $$$ conversion. Those 95% cost you nearly nothing, or act as discovery (I rarely make a support call, but if I do make one, it's valuable to you). As a footnote, in many industries, you give actual, physical products which cost $$$ for free (e.g. an IC) for this reason. Some of these do put up gateways to make sure I'm from a place which might go from 1 sample to buying 10,000 (or an ed institution). I don't think those are a good fit, but I do think it's possible (and not too difficult) to screen out abuse in most cases.