I would love to hear your thoughts about adding a free tier for my PDF filling service [1]. What's your first impression about the current pricing?
I experimented with a "pay as you go" plan that starts at $0 and includes some free PDFs, but so far I've earned close $0 from all of these customers. But this might just be because the people who asked about alternative pricing are much more price-sensitive and early-stage, while bigger companies don't think twice about $49/mo.
I wasn't able to find the free tier plan on your site. Free tier would mean: 2 PDF templates, 100 API requests/month or something similar. All I could find was a 2 weeks trial. Maybe consider adding a true "pay as you go" tier with a small amount of money/PDF template and, something perfect for startups and don't start with a $49 tier.
Sorry yes I meant I don't have a free tier now, and have been thinking about adding one. Thanks for the suggestions! I've also been thinking about adding a "pay as you go" credit system similar to Twilio, but I'm not 100% sure if it would be a good business model.
This wouldn't bother me as a user. I'm just going for questions and answers and if they're pre-asked and answered that's preferable. It's more of whether StackOverflow allows for that use.
Trial period? Hmm, I think they're both equivalent to me. I just want to give the platform a shot before I commit.
Geocod.io has a free tier and we used it at work until we bought the full thing. Google Cloud has a trial and I activated it and then didn't use it so I didn't actually get to try it.
So not quite equivalent, I suppose, since the lock-in is tighter with free tier. You never put anything critical on trial but you do on free tier.
I don't necessarily need a free tier, but I find short trial periods to be unhelpful for something that needs a considerable time investments to truly try. Often I'll end up getting pulled away after starting a trial on something to do some critical bug fixing and other stuff, and then the 14 days are up without my having much of an idea if the product solves my problem.
I much prefer when the trial counts down some other finite resource that I have some control over, rather than wall time. For desktop software, number of days of actual use are a good option, for SaaS that's often difficult to measure sensibly. (Was the app open in a background tab somewhere? Oops, time's up.) So I'm much more likely to give a trial period with a fixed number of events/tickets/jobs/whatever a go.
Co-founder of Geocodio here :) Glad to hear our free tier model worked for you all. Would love to send some swag your way -- send me your address! mhansen (at) geocod (dot) io
Comments
Here's my opinion without any credentials attached:
* Free tier - essential
* Documentation - essential
* Stack overflow tag - desirable
I would love to hear your thoughts about adding a free tier for my PDF filling service [1]. What's your first impression about the current pricing?
I experimented with a "pay as you go" plan that starts at $0 and includes some free PDFs, but so far I've earned close $0 from all of these customers. But this might just be because the people who asked about alternative pricing are much more price-sensitive and early-stage, while bigger companies don't think twice about $49/mo.
[1] http://docspring.com
I wasn't able to find the free tier plan on your site. Free tier would mean: 2 PDF templates, 100 API requests/month or something similar. All I could find was a 2 weeks trial. Maybe consider adding a true "pay as you go" tier with a small amount of money/PDF template and, something perfect for startups and don't start with a $49 tier.
Sorry yes I meant I don't have a free tier now, and have been thinking about adding one. Thanks for the suggestions! I've also been thinking about adding a "pay as you go" credit system similar to Twilio, but I'm not 100% sure if it would be a good business model.
Huh, I'm not in the market so I'm afraid I don't know. Maybe someone else here who needs this will know.
Stack overflow encourages people to create their own questions and answers.
For a new product would you think it odd if there was a load of questions and answers by the company - faqs sort of thing?
It would be a monitored tag so questions would get answered
This wouldn't bother me as a user. I'm just going for questions and answers and if they're pre-asked and answered that's preferable. It's more of whether StackOverflow allows for that use.
I'm pretty sure they do. You can even sponsor a tag.
How do you feel about a free tier vs a reasonable try before you buy?
Trial period? Hmm, I think they're both equivalent to me. I just want to give the platform a shot before I commit.
Geocod.io has a free tier and we used it at work until we bought the full thing. Google Cloud has a trial and I activated it and then didn't use it so I didn't actually get to try it.
So not quite equivalent, I suppose, since the lock-in is tighter with free tier. You never put anything critical on trial but you do on free tier.
I don't necessarily need a free tier, but I find short trial periods to be unhelpful for something that needs a considerable time investments to truly try. Often I'll end up getting pulled away after starting a trial on something to do some critical bug fixing and other stuff, and then the 14 days are up without my having much of an idea if the product solves my problem.
I much prefer when the trial counts down some other finite resource that I have some control over, rather than wall time. For desktop software, number of days of actual use are a good option, for SaaS that's often difficult to measure sensibly. (Was the app open in a background tab somewhere? Oops, time's up.) So I'm much more likely to give a trial period with a fixed number of events/tickets/jobs/whatever a go.
Google does this by giving you credits that expire in six months. I think that works well.
Co-founder of Geocodio here :) Glad to hear our free tier model worked for you all. Would love to send some swag your way -- send me your address! mhansen (at) geocod (dot) io
Love your stuff, but I'm semi-anonymous here so I don't want to undo that. I do appreciate the offer, though :)
The feeling when you find your problem asked and answered on StackOverflow.com
Some things, Money can't buy. For everything else there's... :P