Don't give your product away for free.
Don't give your product or services away for free if you are interested in running a profitable business. It's rare and almost impossible that a cleaning company will clean your house for free. So why are you giving your products away for free? Also free users hardly upgrade. The day you add a price is the day they dissappear.
I also agree that prospective customers should know what they are getting. This can be done with limited days trial. Also if you are angry a product doesn't offer free use or free service, you probably not their target market.
Trending on Indie Hackers
I give my product away for free. Now I have 700k users as an audience to which I sell various other products.
That's an awesome idea @buf.
Quick reference: I have been building and helping others build tech startups since 2004. I can't code.
What I did differently this time was:
Still, it has not been a walk in the park, but the start was made easier due to my own small community.
You grew an audience first and you sell various other products. You are selling the right products to the right audience which means they will buy from you anyway, free or not free.
Freemium model has always been and will stay a lucrative model by limiting features and allowing customers to get familiar with the product.
If a customer is already familiar with the product you'll most likely have a lower churn rate, which makes it worth more in the eyes of investors and business owners.
It's like a big crowd in the marketplace. The more people, the more chances of getting paid customers.
I also agree with this point, I still prefer the free trial route. Also VC backed company can afford to give things away for free since they optimize for rapid growth over profit.
What about giving away enterprise software for free? Large organizations usually are willing to pay for support or for new features, that could be a business model.
What I know is that one need to thread with care when offering enterprise services, some might require that you change your core services. This might or might not make you lose your user base.
Agreed. Before you know it you'll become dependent on a single customers.