3 ms·

Not that I'm any expert in this field, but how does your position rhyme with the observation that almost every big-time saas / paas / *aas platform out there us

Not that I'm any expert in this field, but how does your position rhyme with the observation that almost every big-time saas / paas / *aas platform out there uses that model? - Github - Heroku - Cloudflare - MS Azure AWS perhaps being the biggest one to charge immediately, although that's so incredibly low, I wonder if it still even counts. And even they have a free tier...

SomeStupidPoint 11y ago
The free tier is for 1 year, so technically, it's a limited time trial and does require your credit card up front (which is their main method of converting free accounts -- upselling on that credit card). I think AWS is the type of free the GP supports: limited time, credit card up front, clear upsell channels for the limited service.
gedrap 11y ago
>>> Github Well, it worked out for GitHub because: 1) they have a great product and everyone can see how great it is, without signing up; 2) because of the nature, the word spreads exponentially. One free user can spread the word to literally tens of thousands of potential paying users. So GitHub is in a rather unique position.
jdietrich 11y ago
There are some real subtleties involved here. GitHub have clearly benefited from the network effects of being the de-facto platform for open source. Their free tier doesn't include any private repos, so it won't cannibalise sales of paid tiers. I think that their free tier is effectively a trial on steroids - you're free to contribute to open source projects, engage with the user community and learn the platform, but you have to start paying from day one if you intend to use GitHub for commercial projects. Heroku's free tier is again a sort of supercharged free trial, in that the free tier is too limited to use in production. The free tier offers very little value to users who have no intention of ever upgrading to a paid tier. AWS's free tier is just a very generous free trial - after twelve months, you have to start paying. I think in all cases, the key factor is whether there's a concrete plan for how the free tier feeds into your business. If your product has high switching costs and requires a big investment in learning to use effectively, then it may make sense to have a free tier specifically aimed at letting people learn the platform. Network effects are the obvious case where free users have real business value. I think that the mistake comes from the presumption that there ought to be a free tier, regardless of whether there's a compelling business case for it. As regards you contention that almost every big SAAS product offers a free tier, I think there are at least as many counterexamples - Salesforce, SAP, Citrix, Blackboard, Basecamp, Moz, Kissmetrics.

SomeStupidPoint 11y ago

The free tier is for 1 year, so technically, it's a limited time trial and does require your credit card up front (which is their main method of converting free accounts -- upselling on that credit card). I think AWS is the type of free the GP supports: limited time, credit card up front, clear upsell channels for the limited service.

gedrap 11y ago

>>> Github Well, it worked out for GitHub because: 1) they have a great product and everyone can see how great it is, without signing up; 2) because of the nature, the word spreads exponentially. One free user can spread the word to literally tens of thousands of potential paying users. So GitHub is in a rather unique position.

jdietrich 11y ago

There are some real subtleties involved here. GitHub have clearly benefited from the network effects of being the de-facto platform for open source. Their free tier doesn't include any private repos, so it won't cannibalise sales of paid tiers. I think that their free tier is effectively a trial on steroids - you're free to contribute to open source projects, engage with the user community and learn the platform, but you have to start paying from day one if you intend to use GitHub for commercial projects. Heroku's free tier is again a sort of supercharged free trial, in that the free tier is too limited to use in production. The free tier offers very little value to users who have no intention of ever upgrading to a paid tier. AWS's free tier is just a very generous free trial - after twelve months, you have to start paying. I think in all cases, the key factor is whether there's a concrete plan for how the free tier feeds into your business. If your product has high switching costs and requires a big investment in learning to use effectively, then it may make sense to have a free tier specifically aimed at letting people learn the platform. Network effects are the obvious case where free users have real business value. I think that the mistake comes from the presumption that there ought to be a free tier, regardless of whether there's a compelling business case for it. As regards you contention that almost every big SAAS product offers a free tier, I think there are at least as many counterexamples - Salesforce, SAP, Citrix, Blackboard, Basecamp, Moz, Kissmetrics.