Should I offer a free version of my SaaS?
I'm about to launch a new product, Trendflow, which is a tool to discover and study YouTube trends. You can view it live here.
The pricing is simple, $9.99/month but there is no free version of the tool. So:
- Should I offer a free version for users to get a glimpse of the real product?
- Or should I make users able to request a demo before subscribing?
- Or a video recording (demo/walkthrough) of the tool should be enough?
- Or money back guarantee?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences. And if you need to see the tool (the dashboard,) let me know and I can send you a link to try it free of charge.
Your price is very low. If you are going to charge $10, then ideally you shouldn't have a free plan.
However, I had given out a generous free plan for Prospectss.com initially, which helped get me a lot of users and brand discovery.
Ideally, you should charge 3x-10x more of the price. Give a small free plan, so your users can try it out and then upgrade to the paid plan.
Thanks Amin for sharing your experience.
I'm not 100% decided about the pricing. I know that some YouTube agencies are willing to pay $50/month or more for it, but I want to target a wider audience (YouTubers, researchers, etc.) and that's why I lowered the price. Plus, I have plans for some really intersting and novel stuff to add in the future with a more expensive upgrade. For now, I just want to get traction.
But you saying that the price is very low will make me think more about it anyway :)
Great question! Let's share our experience. At first the product was completely free to get new users and they helped us test it. Then we added paid plans with full functionality and left only the basic features on the Free plan. We also added a Free trial so that users could familiarise themselves with all the features of the product before deciding to buy it. Perhaps in the future we will remove the Free plan and leave only the trial. In general, everything should be flexible and as already written here - it depends on your goals.
If you're interested, you can check out our product line here: https://getscreen.me/en/plan
We offer a free, very limited trial and it has allowed us to talk to a lot more potential customers, get feedback, and build relationships with them.
Until you reach a critical mass of conversions I won't suggest a free plan/version.
Many people will just stick with it, burning your resources.
Hi Ammar - off topic question, what are the benefits of selling through Gumroad instead of adding Stripe for payment?
More convenient for where I am.
Thank you!
Free version is a great option for letting people try out your product. If you don't bear much cost for keeping a free tier, you should keep it. I believe that if your product is a "Vitamin" (nice to have), do keep a free tier but if your product is a "Painkiller" (need to have), it's fine if you exclude free tier.
I like the vitamin-painkiller analogy :)
I think offer a free version is always a good choice, it's a way to evaluate your product and service for your customer.
I agree with that. You can use a Freemium package maybe?
The key is to show value before asking for payment.
Currently it's a leap of faith to subscribe.
Given it is early days then a free trial will help you understand demand and gain feedback. If you can't acquire (and retain) free subscribers, then it ain't gonna work. When you have good feedback and a proven product could drop free access.
I added a money back guarantee where users get a full refund with no questions asked. Do you think it's still a leap of faith to subscribe?
It's a good move.
Not the lowest friction choice, but see what happens. Suggest putting "Money Back Guarantee" (button or link + pop-up or reveal) on 1st page, under the "Get Started" button.
Best of luck!
Thanks for the suggestion, will do it.
I agree that there is still some friction, but yeah let's wait and see.
I would say 2 things:
Free version of a product is basically marketing. Think of the lady handing out samples in the supermarket. If you can afford to provide users with a free version do so, especially as a young startup.
Typeform this week did a 180 degrees change in their free version, so even well-established companies still do trial and error when it comes to the pricing strategy, etc.
Good luck!!
Very hard question to answer, it depends on your current goal.
In the early days freemium can be an easy way to get people using the product if your aim is to develop the product around early users.
Over time it just becomes a marketing strategy so you need to work out how it will compare to paid only & free trials. Paid only and free trials will generally convert to revenue better.
My rule of thumb, not based on any real data, is that if the user can get near instant value (ie couple of days) then go with a no quibble money back as they can do actionable stuff ASAP.
A good walk thru series of bite sized videos prior to sign up would also help as they can see what to expect.
Did spot a few typos on the main page 'why' section: Trendful, Hom, Trednflow
Good luck with the project.
Thanks Dave. Yes, with this project, people can get instant value so I think a money-back guarantee would be suitable.
And thanks for spotting the typos, they are fixed and should be live soon.
Unless you're getting massive backlinks/baked-in virality, free is usually a bad idea.
You won't reap marketing benefits from free users 99% of the time.
Because serious users with a reach/audience won't see "free" as a value proposition.
Usually the customers who will help you most with your business are also your highest-spending customers, and not only because of the revenue they bring in for you.
It's because of their reach/audience, especially if you have baked-in viral elements.
It can't be a question.