Free tiers are hugely impactful for the cases you mention where people onboard is the limiting factor for value not time.
I find the really interesting part about free tiers is balancing both how much of your user base is monetizable and how much value you give in the free tier vs save for your higher tiers.
If you have a product that is valuable to an individual or small team, but only monetize at 5 people, you will miss out on being able to monetize a large percentage of your users.
If your free tier is too valuable people won't be compelled to upgrade, not valuable enough and people won't be compelled to give the product a try or stick around long enough to see or want the value of a higher tier.
I think this could make a good topic for our next article. Would love to hear others experiences and thoughts on free tiers vs free trials!
If your free tier is too valuable people won't be compelled to upgrade, not valuable enough and people won't be compelled to give the product a try or stick around long enough to see or want the value of a higher tier.
This is my experience when trying pick a read-it-later/bookmarking app. I’m currently using the free tier of raindrop.io and I don’t plan to upgrade at all. The only features I need is bookmark storage and highlights. I don’t think it’s too valuable, but it’s valuable enough to satisfy all I want from a bookmark manager.
When I used Instapaper and Pocket in the past, because of their limited number of highlights in the free tier, I found myself peeking at the pricing page constantly and pondering whether I should upgrade. I didn’t have enough money to pay for yet another subscription, but the pressure to upgrade is there. I think I even subscribed for a month or two.
My other thought is on the granularity of upgrades. Probably for simplicity, both for the users and developers, upgrades tend to limited to maybe 2-5 tiers with the base tier being free. Raindrop.io, Instapaper, and Pocket’s page on the premium tiers tend to list a lot of features but I find myself skipping through most of them. When I see that list, I know they’re charging me for the whole feature set when I only need one or two. As a result, I’m quite hesitant to subscribe to any of them. The ratio of need vs offered is important to me; if those features were compiled into a checklist and I only check one or two, then I’m out of the premium funnel.
An example of decent intersection between what I need and what is being offered, is Tutanota’s private paid tier. Even though, there are still some features I don’t need, but the price is low enough that I can tolerate the feeling of not utilising my subscription enough. They also offer some other mini-upgrades and I can see why they’re an extension to the paid tier instead of being a part of it.
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Well said Dan!
Free tiers are hugely impactful for the cases you mention where people onboard is the limiting factor for value not time.
I find the really interesting part about free tiers is balancing both how much of your user base is monetizable and how much value you give in the free tier vs save for your higher tiers.
If you have a product that is valuable to an individual or small team, but only monetize at 5 people, you will miss out on being able to monetize a large percentage of your users.
If your free tier is too valuable people won't be compelled to upgrade, not valuable enough and people won't be compelled to give the product a try or stick around long enough to see or want the value of a higher tier.
I think this could make a good topic for our next article. Would love to hear others experiences and thoughts on free tiers vs free trials!
This is my experience when trying pick a read-it-later/bookmarking app. I’m currently using the free tier of raindrop.io and I don’t plan to upgrade at all. The only features I need is bookmark storage and highlights. I don’t think it’s too valuable, but it’s valuable enough to satisfy all I want from a bookmark manager.
When I used Instapaper and Pocket in the past, because of their limited number of highlights in the free tier, I found myself peeking at the pricing page constantly and pondering whether I should upgrade. I didn’t have enough money to pay for yet another subscription, but the pressure to upgrade is there. I think I even subscribed for a month or two.
My other thought is on the granularity of upgrades. Probably for simplicity, both for the users and developers, upgrades tend to limited to maybe 2-5 tiers with the base tier being free. Raindrop.io, Instapaper, and Pocket’s page on the premium tiers tend to list a lot of features but I find myself skipping through most of them. When I see that list, I know they’re charging me for the whole feature set when I only need one or two. As a result, I’m quite hesitant to subscribe to any of them. The ratio of need vs offered is important to me; if those features were compiled into a checklist and I only check one or two, then I’m out of the premium funnel.
An example of decent intersection between what I need and what is being offered, is Tutanota’s private paid tier. Even though, there are still some features I don’t need, but the price is low enough that I can tolerate the feeling of not utilising my subscription enough. They also offer some other mini-upgrades and I can see why they’re an extension to the paid tier instead of being a part of it.