Is freemium dead? How about free trials?
I've seen more and more sites move completely away from Freemium. As well, I've seen more sites immediately asking for payment, versus giving free trials.
Both of these approaches certainly makes things much easier development-wise.
But I wonder how well they work w/ conversions.
I know it's been a while, but I was going to ask this very same question, or similar. I wanted to offer freemium, but I'm wondering if it's just better to collect a method of payment upfront.
I read a passage somewhere on an article (sorry I don't recall the article) that said if you are offering freemium or a free version of your product, what's the value that your customers are offering you?
With free comes a very great price: it's our own willingness to support it. This dies after a few months when the hype wears out and now things aren't exactly breaking, but occasionally they may need an update, and you just might not care enough about the product. "Free" always comes at a price, whether it is to the consumer, or the provider.
By collecting payment up front, there are two things that happen:
Even in offering a free trial of the service, too many free -- not enough people deciding to go beyond that level, can ultimately also ruin your product. So I think by charging upfront, you are telling people this is a product that means business.
Seriously, where else can you go in the world to get a "free sample" of anything? Costco, maybe -- giving away free samples? That's really about it. I get that people want to see it and try it before they buy it, and I'm totally the same way, but if I can at least see some demo upfront of the product, even if it's interactive, I'm more than likely to believe your product can do what it was meant to do.
By at least requiring some form of payment on file, you're telling them: "You're going to like this product and find it valuable, but lets get the payment method out of the way right now. We're not here to hold you hostage. You can remove your payment at any time. We just want to make the whole process as smooth as possible."
But this is dependent on the product, what it does, and its value. Basically, for every customer that gets your product for free is a customer that isn't really supporting your product and ultimately, you are hurting your customers. They don't know any better. You do.