I love social software and interesting data.
I'm 28. I love cooking and trying new food.
I live in Brooklyn, NY Bayonne, NJ.
Contact me at david.lifson@gmail.com.
I'm the co-founder of Postling, a unified dashboard for small businesses.
It's important to me to give back to the startup community, so if you are interesting in hearing my thoughts about your startup, sign up for my office hours or send me an email.
My other sites:
I think the choice between free trial and free version (or both) depends entirely on the product and the target audience. If a product has features that clearly have value associated with them, yet it’s possible for users to get a taste for the product without those features, then offering a free version can be logical. For instance, WordPress allows anyone to cretae a blog for free, but charges when it comes time to map the blog to a domain or customize the CSS. Any serious blogger will want, and be willing to pay for, those features. There is a clear upgrade path for a target audience, and their pricing has a correct (in my opinion) cost/value ratio. Free trials, on the other hand, can make a tremendous amount of sense if the target audience most likely has a budget for the product, but needs to be convinced either of the category (that they need *any* type of similar product) or your particular product. For enterprise software, it’s almost a requirement that companies be allowed to try out applications as a part of the sales process. If the product offers real value, companies will be able to perceive the value within the time allotted and be more than happy to pay if the price is right. It’s trickier when companies aren’t yet convinced of the category value, but a good sales person can usually work through this during the free trial. Now, the trickiest situations usually arise when the target audience varies, and the product’s total value won’t necessarily present itself to the adopting user. BaseCamp falls within this category. Users can range from independent contractors and small startups to enterprise customers with big budgets, all of whom will need some time to use the product with their colleagues. BaseCamp’s model works very well for them, since the upgrade to paid plans will only be required in two scenarios: 1) a consultant/contractor grows to more than 15 clients, by which point the product has presented a lot of value and a budget has been made available, or 2) the customers already has a large number of projects, and project management software will present immediate value once the group gets on board. So those that started free will upgrade when the time is right, and those that already need paid plans get the chance to try them for free, with no commitment. Those that have no reason to pay are not asked to do so. The price/value structure is definitely the trickiest part of planning a business, but once you figure out the “will pay for” features, choosing between a free trial, free version, or both, should be easy.
