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Is this a response to the "Don't offer a free plan" article floating around here somewhere? Reading them both, it seems the other one is written by a developer

Is this a response to the "Don't offer a free plan" article floating around here somewhere? Reading them both, it seems the other one is written by a developer and this one is written by a marketing person. The marketing person probably knows more about this then a developer would, but it is fun to see their perspectives. The developer doesn't want to deal with free users demanding resources and the marketer wants to position the product to be profitable. Personally I trust developers more than marketing people, and I generally have a bit of disdain for marketing folks. They market their trade as exposing the right product to the right audience, but usually what it amounts to in substance is manipulating people. Still, the marketing person's perspective on this particular topic is important to consider.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
PaulHoule 6y ago
I think of it this way. If I was buying some software for work that costs (say) $500 the process involves many steps, including convincing myself I want it and concincing my boss to pay for it (usually.) It could take days to give a product a fair evaluation but I have to consider the probability is (say) 30% that I get it in the end, so that the invested time might be "wasted". Say I spend 2 days on eval and I get paid $50 an hour, that is $800 worth of time which I could spend on project work, or 'sharpening the saw' in some other way. If I have to look at four products to buy one I am spending $2400 of time to buy a $500 product. So I think of free trials as 'free as in puppy'.
- mooreds 6y ago
  Hmm. But don't you still have to evaluate the solutions whether you have a free trial or not? It's not like a product without a free trial is magically going to work for you; you still have to test it out, correct? (Or do I misunderstand?) If that is the case, then anything which makes it easier to evaluate will make it easier to purchase. If you have to choose between a free trial and spending $500 for a month to evaluate, won't you pick the free trial, even if you are spending $800 of your time to evaluate? The context I'm coming from is that my current employer has a full featured, forever free offering aimed squarely at developers: an auth/user management system (link in bio if you are curious). The paid offerings have better support and premium features. Our thesis is that for a focused developer tool (rather than a tool that can be used by non technical users, which are many of the examples in the original post) you need to lower the barrier to entry. Integrating with an auth system is more of a commitment than picking a different tool to create images or manage an email list. It's like picking a database. I think the original article did a great job of talking about where freemium works (big market, virality, etc), but didn't cover all the places where freemium works, in particular dev tools.
  - ido 6y ago
    Maybe the context is different here, but I understand freemium not as having a free trial/demo but as in providing a complete but basic service for free that you expect most people to only ever use (e.g. Gmail and Gdrive vs Google Workspace).
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    I would say it is like poker. If you put some chips in the pot at the beginning you feel more committed.
conductr 6y ago
I think the 2 approaches can be segmented based on market appeal. Canva, figma, and some of the other examples being thrown around are products with mass appeal. Also products that I imagine don’t really require much customer service. As it’s expected you figure it out yourself with these products. The dev focused tools, a la the indie hacker type, are usually after some very niche user. In this case, you should just make the user pay. There’s not many of them anyways and you can likely command a higher prices because you’re essentially solving a problem that would require them to solve (expensive) or just keep status quo in place (eg manual process). This is how I like to think about freemium anyways. If product has mass appeal, eg bookkeeping, then freemium makes sense. If it’s bespoke compliance software tailored just for veterinary hospitals then everyone pays
villasv 6y ago
> Personally I trust developers more than marketing people, and I generally have a bit of disdain for marketing folks. They market their trade as exposing the right product to the right audience, but usually what it amounts to in substance is manipulating people. I hope someday you get to know people who enjoy good marketing like I imagine you enjoy good software, so you can change this view. Imagine a different POV: developers sell their trade as solving real world problems, but usually what it amounts to is overcomplicating things or trampling domain experts opinion in favor of bad assumptions. As in all professions, most work you'll see around is not work to be proud of. Don't use random sampling to form an opinion about the value of a profession.
jlbnjmn 6y ago
Speaking as someone who blends marketing/design/technical work I have a few thoughts on this. First, there's pressure on a lot of marketers to sell more this month or this quarter. Second, there's an expectation to prove that an idea is good using data and to prove the idea worked using data. Third, there's very little interest in investing in the art side of the trade. When taken together, you get what we've got. What am I trying to say? I guess just that in my experience it's always been the owners and top level managers pushing for short-term, unethical, bad ux decisions and focusing on manipulating instead of serving people. And it sucks. I think a lot of us got into marketing because we're creative and technical and wanting to make businesses and products better for people, both consumers and society at large. Or maybe that's just me. Edit: the worst part of it is the demoralizing realization that the owners are often right. Most people actually do want McDonalds, like shopping at Walmart/Amazon, and enjoy Facebook. So I guess the worst part about marketing, the part nobody talks much about, is that giving the majority of people what they want usually means low quality at the cheapest price.
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  Yeah you're probably right, a lot of it is pressure from executives to "deliver." Still, I look at a company like burger king, or a toy company, or Disney, or a radio station, and the entirety of them, including the product itself, is marketing. If these companies could take your money without giving you anything at all they would. The idea of marketing is supposed to be to put your product in front of it's users for you. Instead with countless examples you see companies rebuilding their entire product line as a marketing strategy. There is no product anymore, just that last mile of marketing to get your money in their hand. This is so common nowadays.
dceddia 6y ago
I think the size of the business is a big consideration in this whole discussion of free plan vs. not. The examples in this article and the other one are big, established, mostly VC-backed companies. I don't think it's a question with a one-size-fits-all answer. When the company has lots of money to spend on supporting those free users, having the free plan probably makes a lot of sense to grow faster. When the company is just you in your spare bedroom, there are fewer cycles to spare on the prototypically-needy free customers, so optimizing for fewer -- but paying -- users can be a good trade.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

PaulHoule 6y ago

I think of it this way. If I was buying some software for work that costs (say) $500 the process involves many steps, including convincing myself I want it and concincing my boss to pay for it (usually.) It could take days to give a product a fair evaluation but I have to consider the probability is (say) 30% that I get it in the end, so that the invested time might be "wasted". Say I spend 2 days on eval and I get paid $50 an hour, that is $800 worth of time which I could spend on project work, or 'sharpening the saw' in some other way. If I have to look at four products to buy one I am spending $2400 of time to buy a $500 product. So I think of free trials as 'free as in puppy'.

mooreds 6y ago
Hmm. But don't you still have to evaluate the solutions whether you have a free trial or not? It's not like a product without a free trial is magically going to work for you; you still have to test it out, correct? (Or do I misunderstand?) If that is the case, then anything which makes it easier to evaluate will make it easier to purchase. If you have to choose between a free trial and spending $500 for a month to evaluate, won't you pick the free trial, even if you are spending $800 of your time to evaluate? The context I'm coming from is that my current employer has a full featured, forever free offering aimed squarely at developers: an auth/user management system (link in bio if you are curious). The paid offerings have better support and premium features. Our thesis is that for a focused developer tool (rather than a tool that can be used by non technical users, which are many of the examples in the original post) you need to lower the barrier to entry. Integrating with an auth system is more of a commitment than picking a different tool to create images or manage an email list. It's like picking a database. I think the original article did a great job of talking about where freemium works (big market, virality, etc), but didn't cover all the places where freemium works, in particular dev tools.
- ido 6y ago
  Maybe the context is different here, but I understand freemium not as having a free trial/demo but as in providing a complete but basic service for free that you expect most people to only ever use (e.g. Gmail and Gdrive vs Google Workspace).
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  I would say it is like poker. If you put some chips in the pot at the beginning you feel more committed.

conductr 6y ago

I think the 2 approaches can be segmented based on market appeal. Canva, figma, and some of the other examples being thrown around are products with mass appeal. Also products that I imagine don’t really require much customer service. As it’s expected you figure it out yourself with these products. The dev focused tools, a la the indie hacker type, are usually after some very niche user. In this case, you should just make the user pay. There’s not many of them anyways and you can likely command a higher prices because you’re essentially solving a problem that would require them to solve (expensive) or just keep status quo in place (eg manual process). This is how I like to think about freemium anyways. If product has mass appeal, eg bookkeeping, then freemium makes sense. If it’s bespoke compliance software tailored just for veterinary hospitals then everyone pays

villasv 6y ago

> Personally I trust developers more than marketing people, and I generally have a bit of disdain for marketing folks. They market their trade as exposing the right product to the right audience, but usually what it amounts to in substance is manipulating people. I hope someday you get to know people who enjoy good marketing like I imagine you enjoy good software, so you can change this view. Imagine a different POV: developers sell their trade as solving real world problems, but usually what it amounts to is overcomplicating things or trampling domain experts opinion in favor of bad assumptions. As in all professions, most work you'll see around is not work to be proud of. Don't use random sampling to form an opinion about the value of a profession.

jlbnjmn 6y ago

Speaking as someone who blends marketing/design/technical work I have a few thoughts on this. First, there's pressure on a lot of marketers to sell more this month or this quarter. Second, there's an expectation to prove that an idea is good using data and to prove the idea worked using data. Third, there's very little interest in investing in the art side of the trade. When taken together, you get what we've got. What am I trying to say? I guess just that in my experience it's always been the owners and top level managers pushing for short-term, unethical, bad ux decisions and focusing on manipulating instead of serving people. And it sucks. I think a lot of us got into marketing because we're creative and technical and wanting to make businesses and products better for people, both consumers and society at large. Or maybe that's just me. Edit: the worst part of it is the demoralizing realization that the owners are often right. Most people actually do want McDonalds, like shopping at Walmart/Amazon, and enjoy Facebook. So I guess the worst part about marketing, the part nobody talks much about, is that giving the majority of people what they want usually means low quality at the cheapest price.

betwixthewires 6y ago
Yeah you're probably right, a lot of it is pressure from executives to "deliver." Still, I look at a company like burger king, or a toy company, or Disney, or a radio station, and the entirety of them, including the product itself, is marketing. If these companies could take your money without giving you anything at all they would. The idea of marketing is supposed to be to put your product in front of it's users for you. Instead with countless examples you see companies rebuilding their entire product line as a marketing strategy. There is no product anymore, just that last mile of marketing to get your money in their hand. This is so common nowadays.

dceddia 6y ago

I think the size of the business is a big consideration in this whole discussion of free plan vs. not. The examples in this article and the other one are big, established, mostly VC-backed companies. I don't think it's a question with a one-size-fits-all answer. When the company has lots of money to spend on supporting those free users, having the free plan probably makes a lot of sense to grow faster. When the company is just you in your spare bedroom, there are fewer cycles to spare on the prototypically-needy free customers, so optimizing for fewer -- but paying -- users can be a good trade.