6 ms·

The Psychological Difference Between Freemium & Free Trial Plans

18 points by dchuk 14y ago

rymedia 14y ago
Got me thinking. Good post.
kaedus 14y ago
I like the distinction you make that freemium can work with certain businesses, but with others it doesn't make as much sense.
hackerzac 14y ago
Awesome stuff
uiri 14y ago
I don't think a comparison between amount of space usable/user (like in Evernote) and max words/day (your freemium?) is fair. If Evernote limited based on bandwidth/day or something like that or your model was total # of words a free account can use, then perhaps the comparison would be more fair. I think the problem with a max words/day is that the customer will limit their dependence to that maximum. You need the customer in a mindset where they'll only be concerned about the free plan's limits by the time they are dependent on the product.
- dchuk 14y ago
  right, I agree. I was using evernote moreso because 1) I was writing the post in evernote at the time so it was the first thing I thought of and 2) they have extremely low costs and require a decent amount of time to convince a user to convert to a paying user (they fully need to incorporate evernote into their workflow before converting). My product (and this is in no way a comparison on product value to evernote) produces keyword analysis results nearly immediately, so the value can be realized a lot sooner and the user can incorporate my product into their workflow a lot sooner than something like evernote. Also, as Evernote limits by total storage space in the free plan, it's comparable to what we used to do with total keywords for a free trial (before our freemium).
rogerbinns 14y ago
I'm still astonished at the sites that want contact information before they will tell you how their product works. HelpScout seemed useful for my startup, and I end up at a page where they will show me a video providing I supply a plethora of information. I waited for several minutes waiting for the email to arrive at mailinator before giving up.

18 points by dchuk 14y ago

Got me thinking. Good post.

I like the distinction you make that freemium can work with certain businesses, but with others it doesn't make as much sense.

hackerzac 14y ago

Awesome stuff

uiri 14y ago

I don't think a comparison between amount of space usable/user (like in Evernote) and max words/day (your freemium?) is fair. If Evernote limited based on bandwidth/day or something like that or your model was total # of words a free account can use, then perhaps the comparison would be more fair. I think the problem with a max words/day is that the customer will limit their dependence to that maximum. You need the customer in a mindset where they'll only be concerned about the free plan's limits by the time they are dependent on the product.

dchuk 14y ago
right, I agree. I was using evernote moreso because 1) I was writing the post in evernote at the time so it was the first thing I thought of and 2) they have extremely low costs and require a decent amount of time to convince a user to convert to a paying user (they fully need to incorporate evernote into their workflow before converting). My product (and this is in no way a comparison on product value to evernote) produces keyword analysis results nearly immediately, so the value can be realized a lot sooner and the user can incorporate my product into their workflow a lot sooner than something like evernote. Also, as Evernote limits by total storage space in the free plan, it's comparable to what we used to do with total keywords for a free trial (before our freemium).

rogerbinns 14y ago

I'm still astonished at the sites that want contact information before they will tell you how their product works. HelpScout seemed useful for my startup, and I end up at a page where they will show me a video providing I supply a plethora of information. I waited for several minutes waiting for the email to arrive at mailinator before giving up.