Pricing strategy update: no more watermarks!

Some background

After the re-branding last month to simplePDF (FormulaireMagique was just way to complex to remember or to write for non-french speakers) and before revamping the landing page, I decided to update the pricing strategy.

What changed ?

No more watermark

simplePDF.eu used to be free but with a twist: a watermark that would be always visible at the bottom right of each page.

After talking to a couple of customers, I realised that the current pricing strategy wasn't ideal as a customer / user: "the tool seems great, but I get this annoying watermark, which runs my PDFs. If I don't want it, I need to pay straight away."

Added to that feedback, this also reminded me of my own experience with a great product that I have been using when streaming movies to my TV: Airflow. I remember when I first downloaded the app after hearing about it from a friend: I started streaming one episode, then another one before I hit the paywall: by that time I was sold on the app and just proceeded to pay.

I'm basically hoping that this price change for simplePDF will have a similar effect on my users.

The new pricing strategy

Instead of a watermark, users now have 5 "free" PDFs (unique ones) that they can modify freely. Once that limit is hit, they are not able to edit new PDFs unless they start paying.

Or at least that's what the copy leads them to believe, because truth to be told, I haven't implemented the actual logic behind the scenes! So in practice some lucky users might be able to be complete freeloaders for a while.

That is until a decide to actually implement the logic (for lack of time, since I'm building simplePDF on the side, I try to really down-scope as much as possible any feature and changes).

In the meantime I built a simple PostgreSQL Materialised view to keep track of the usage.

This will allow me to nicely monitor if I have such users, and then implement the paywall logic.

In the meantime, I'm just observing from the distance and revamping the landing page (I have a conversion rate of 60% from landing to editing, but I'm sure I can do better).

What next?

I'll be revamping the landing page, and also updating the ads that I have been running, to be targeting the US market, I want to see how it fares.

Until next time!