I built a product, got 1,000 users on a free plan. What now?

You're grossly underpriced and free plan is far too generous.

Nobody can tell you exactly what you should do here, but here are some things to test...

1. Charge per domain (i.e. $2/domain/month)
2. Charge per domain multiples (i.e. $10/mo per 5 domains)

Benefit of those two is you scale with the customer...the more domains a customer tracks, the more value they get (because it's increasingly more hassle to try to tack lots of domains the more you try).

1. Reduce free plan to 1 domain and and make the first tier $19 for, at most 10 domains (though that still feels too generous)
2. Keep prices the same, but reduce free: 1 domain, basic: 5 domains, pro: 10 domains, and then add more tiers
3. Kill the free plan entirely and just offer an X day trial

The thing here is you are offering waayyyyyyyyy too many domains for basically nothing. If somebody is interested in watching 250 domains, they probably already spend thousands or 10's of thousands a month on domains. $19 is nothing. You should be charging those people hundreds a month.

Short answer: charge a veritable crap ton more and stop giving so much away for nothing. :)

Heya @benjam1n – I was one of the many that spotted this on PH and checked it out 😀. I think others are spot on with their feedback thus far (your free plan is too generous etc).

That said, for me, the pricing was all wrong. As a potential customer, I see transactional value here, not ongoing monthly service value.

I'm not sure how much you researched this space, but having used other domain watch / backorder services, I expected to pay per-domain and even hoped you'd lock it up for me automatically when it became available (consider this a future product iteration though).

In the past, I've paid as much as $50 per domain. GoDaddy is charging ~$20 USD/ domain today for a similar service (https://www.godaddy.com/domains/domain-backorder).

Suggestions:

• Ditch the free plan – it's cannibalizing your product's value.
• Charge per domain, as a one-time fee. Start at $20+ (everyone hates GoDaddy and will gladly pay you more not to use them).
• Get rid of the check interval throttling – once you check it once, you'll know when it's set to expire 😀. Just focus on being the service that's the most accurate and quickest to alert customers.
• In the future, consider also registering the domain as soon as it's free to ensure I don't miss the chance to purchase the domain.

Good luck!

For a service like this I would cut off the freemium and simply offer a 14 day trial, then require the upgrade. There simply isn’t a need for most people to upgrade because of the free plan’s features.

There is already a lot of great advice here regarding product, but if you have any questions about actually selling (sales process, overcoming objections, etc), feel free to ask here.

I'm actually launching a Sales for Devs online course soon to help, but happy to answer anything in the meanwhile!

Agreed, 5 domains is a lot. I would give 1 or two free. Also, 48 hours isn't enough to make me concerned that someone else would snatch it up. Maybe a weekly check would be good for the free plan, then 24 hour checks for the paid plans.

Usually with SaaS pricing, if you are getting most of your users purchasing at too low a price point (which for your service is free) it means that your pricing is too high. If you really want to continue offering the free plan, then what that means is you have to either lower your paid plan price, or really limit the feature offering of the free plan. It's tempting to build more and more features for the paid plan, but if the free plan offers what your customers really want for no money, then extra add-ons that they don't really want isn't going to encourage them to buy the more expensive plan. So before you add any more features, I would work on solidifying the pricing for what you already have.

@raquelmsmith @pasfasf @sk24iam @kehers @Fersh @Joe118 @maxime @BartBoch @KeithNicholas @joelweirauch @shaunkelleher @apertureless @jlogic @ktkaushik @gaetanocaruana @alexdransfield @nicksaggese

With all the responses on this thread, people sending messages over live chat, fixing bugs and Rand Fishkin crashing my server with a tweet (https://twitter.com/randfish/status/978153340608462848) I didn't really have time to answer and thank each one of you and... YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME! Thanks so much! 🤗 🤗 🤗

Great idea. How about purchasing the domain for users when it becomes available? You could make money by charging for that service.

A one domain / extension plan for the free tier is fine.
Consider adding universal watch (foo.com, foo.net, foo.io, foo.fr, foo.co.uk ...) for the paying plans.

But for me to pay such a service, you must prove me that when foo.com gets free to register, you'll detect on time, and I'll be able to register on time. Knowing that there are bots / services (that are registrars too and so get update in advance), auto registering non renewed domains, that's hard.

Few ways to monetize:
-offer affiliate links directing users to domain providers - this will make you some extra buck
-to make more money above, offer "best domains of the week" - research 10-20 cool domains and send them for free each week - with your link again. This will make you few $$ while you work on other things.
-I cannot see many possibilities with making $$$ without hitting Enterprise customers. I would offer "Domain protection" service, where you can add your own domain and you will get a text notification right before the expiration date.

like others have said 5 is too much

on your paid plans perhaps also offer a wildcard service. Either as a wildcard watch or wild card search.

The other weird thing about this and pricing is domains have known times when they expire. This is really a long term game, perhaps come up with a pricing model around 1 year? 3 years? etc.

I just added a domain to track and noticed that you've made the plan/pricing changes that others have suggested, that's a great first step. I'd be curious to hear how that change goes.

I also echo others suggestion that this at least make an attempt to also register a domain when it becomes available. Integrating with a 3rd party like park.io sounds like the best way to get that working.

After creating my account, I do have a question. Why did you decide to do authentication by sending an email every time someone wants to login? That's a really weird flow vs having a normal username/password, at least in my opinion.

Also, the UI could use a bit more explanation as far as what the different statuses mean, etc. Overall though, it looks like a good start and appears to work as advertised.

Just a thought but what if you offered a subscription service. X per year for notifications of any 1 or 2 word .com's that drop?

Don't be scared about marketing and sales. It's all about thinking of things in a users's shoes and the best way to do this is talk to the users. Reach out to individuals directly, who have good activity... added all 5 domains... logged in a few times...

Here are my initial thoughts:

1. You have a "transactional sale", so I don't think you have to worry much about a traditional sales calls.
2. I agree with others that the free plan is WAY too generous. I'd say offer 1 for free. The a X day trial may be more difficult as they won't see the value.
3. Hard to see the value until a expiration happens. How do I know this even works? I need some confidence that the checks work enough that I'm willing to stop manually checking. Personally I haven't signed up for the service so don't know what displays or what alerts come but if I was signing up for a new service. I'd want to prove that it works before I pay for it.

If you are planning to ditch the free plan then i think $9.99/month for starter plan is too much.

I would like to pay like $3.99 for every domain. That would make more sense for sure.

• Get rid of the free tier -- offer a trial period instead.
• Then set the cost per domain tracked per month (Godaddy charges $18 or $20, for a comparable)
• Add a way for your SAAS to bid on the domain; the maximum amount the client is willing to pay should be deposited with you. The value of having their money in your bank account is more credit for you.

Benjamin Alijagic thanks for sharing your experience up until now. I think you are doing a good job because as you might already know up until now (through this community), some dream of those figures! ;-)

Freemium - how to take advantage?

The whole point of having a FREE plan is to get visitors to sign up. They get a FREE service (generous service) and you get a contact. A very important figure called conversion rate becomes prominent then.

But whilst a lot of founders see FREE users as potentially missed opportunity I would like to present this in a different way.

Take advantage of this initial 'seed', make sure you plant it and water it often by asking your 1000 users (not just once - but quite often) to refer their friends. There is a reason why they signed up in the first place. If they intend to stay using your service for FREE at least ask them to refer others who eventually might convert into paying customers.

How can you create a refer-a-friend?

Since your background is development you can go ahead and create a very simple refer-a-friend system where those who refer their friends they will get a discount (just as an example).

You might also consider integrating a 3rd party referral platform which will handle all the details for you whilst you focus on what you do best.

Disclaimer: I am biased since I am the founder of EarlyParrot - a referral marketing platform. But nonetheless EarlyParrot is helping a lot of SaaS like you to take it to the next level. Ping me if you need further advice.

5 is a lot, I would go with 1.

This comment was deleted 3 years ago