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I have offered a free plan for my SaaS from day one, with quite generous limits, on a niche with mostly paid-only alternatives. I think it comes down to tradeof
by amzans 6y ago
I have offered a free plan for my SaaS from day one, with quite generous limits, on a niche with mostly paid-only alternatives. I think it comes down to tradeoffs.
As a self-funded solo founder, this has helped me gain many users since launch, which give me plenty feedback and help to validate new product features without having lots of marketing effort so far.
I don't sell any data, or display ads on free accounts. The reason to upgrade is more capacity, or complementary features for business users (e.g. alerts or organisation/team accounts).
That said, a couple of things to consider:
- Do your numbers: if you have 100 free users for every paying customer, are you going to be profitable? Can you handle the costs?
- In my experience, free users tend to attract more free users.
- They can generate a lot of support pressure, but handled right can be a great way to understand your customers problems. Handled wrong can kill you.
- Expect a small percentage of free users to cause the most trouble. From creating several accounts with different email addresses, to publicly complaining about the free plan being limited, to requesting lots of features only to switch to another free product once it's time to upgrade.
- If you're targeting B2B, price might not be as much of a factor as you might think. Are you going to save or make money for other businesses?
I could talk more about this, but will probably write a blog post one day with more learnings once I have them.
I’m happy to offer a free plan as long as it’s sustainable and I can see the benefits. So far it’s going great for me, but know what you’re getting into, and be sure you can handle the costs both in time and money with low conversion rates vs a trial model.
Edit: I moved the comment to this discussion as it's more fitting. I removed the link to my product.
- polote 6y agoAre you going to continue deleting and recreating this comment until it is upvoted ? It is the 3 times I see you creating and deleting this comment, in either this thread or in the other one on the front page on the pricing strategy. You were already flagged for bad behavior there https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25322651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25322651
- amzans 6y agoLet me come clean: I moved my comment to where I thought the discussion is still happening. I have something to say and would like to share my learnings to discuss with other people here. Please don't try to shame others, it doesn't help anyone. Be kind: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- smichel17 6y agoYou don't have to delete the old comment to do that. That is what makes it look shady. Deleting the old comment doesn't make it less spammy, it just makes it look like you're trying to hide the fact that you're posting it multiple times.
- amzans 6y agoThanks, that’s helpful advice.
- polote 6y agoNo you didn't. You first created your comment on this thread, then deleted it, to copy it in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26059517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26059517 then deleted it, to copy it again in the current thread. If you didn't act bad in the past I would trust you, but this is not the case. As for the content of the comment, I actually find it relevant
- amzans 6y agoYes, I moved my comment right after posting as there were two alternative discussions going on, and I wasn't certain on which one to post. > If you didn't act bad in the past I would trust you, but this is not the case. I apologize if I posted too often once again. If anyone finds it useful, I just discovered HN has a "delay" feature: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231024 I just set it to 5 minutes - in my case it's enough time to edit/review the comment before it's visible.