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on Gopher (inofficial) | |
Visit Hacker News on the Web | |
COMMENT PAGE FOR: | |
A fourteen-day free trial ainât gonna cut it | |
nedt wrote 2 hours 18 min ago: | |
The very least that could be done is not having a trial period in | |
calendar days, but actually usage days. I signup today, login and play | |
around - that's day 1. Then I get to do other things. Two weeks later I | |
come back and that should be day 2 of the trial period, and not day 15 | |
and can't use it anymore. | |
b3ing wrote 12 hours 55 min ago: | |
Some software can take days to learn to be able to test a more advanced | |
feature. For example a unique niche 3D software | |
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote 13 hours 47 min ago: | |
Actual title is: "Your 14-day free trial ain't gonna cut it" | |
ezekg wrote 11 hours 43 min ago: | |
Not sure why it was editorialized but w/e. | |
esafak wrote 16 hours 2 min ago: | |
The ideal is usage-based trials, which directly translates to value | |
derived, but that's harder to implement, so you get time-based trials. | |
There, I said it in one sentence. | |
sonicanatidae wrote 16 hours 17 min ago: | |
The only ones that really bother me are crippleware. | |
Either provide the full product, for a limited time/usage, OR, just | |
skip it. | |
The last fucking thing ANYONE needs is to work through the UI of an | |
app, get everything staged, then get a fucking "buy me" prompt when | |
they click "ok" to start the process. | |
As far as the 7/14/30 day trials, I'm fine with those, as long as the | |
above is respected, otherwise, GTFO. | |
underdeserver wrote 18 hours 35 min ago: | |
Ironic. Keygens used to be how, as kids, we got around 14-day trials :) | |
rhdunn wrote 18 hours 58 min ago: | |
I signed up for a trial for WoW back in the day. It was about 3 seasons | |
in, and the way the install worked was that you had to download and | |
install each update separately, each of which was 2-3 GB each. | |
I was using a slow dial-up at the time and spent the duration of the | |
trial downloading the game. When I got to log in for the first time in | |
a playable state, it said my trial expired! So ended my WoW journey. | |
It would have made more sense to start the trial from the first | |
login/entering character creation. | |
I like the Path of Exile model. The game is free to play, and you pay | |
the price of a game to unlock inventory management. -- By that time you | |
know if you are invested in the game or not. | |
em-bee wrote 15 hours 59 min ago: | |
similar thing with steam demo days. | |
for a weekend or so a bunch of games are available for free to try | |
them out. sounds nice until you find out that they are really only | |
available for the duration of the demo days. so one time i looked and | |
i found a dozen games that i wanted to try, but then i realized that | |
i would have to spend the whole weekend playing games in order to try | |
them all. i ended up trying not a single one of them because i just | |
can't tell my family that i won't be available for a few days until i | |
tested all those games. | |
what would have made sense is to allow downloading all the games for | |
free and then give each of them a time limit of a few hours to play. | |
still not ideal (i am a slow player so i'd like to have a bit more | |
time to evaluate a game) but way better than terminating the trial | |
before i have even had the time to play anything. | |
nutrie wrote 19 hours 26 min ago: | |
Whenever I'm on the purchasing end working for a larger org, it is one | |
of my initial requirements that the potential business partner is | |
willing to extend their trial period, sometimes "indefinitely" (i. e. | |
without an initial spec, cause I gotta talk to teams while getting | |
familiar with Foo myself). I don't think anyone has ever refused, quite | |
the opposite. But if they did, they're automatically off the table, | |
unless they're a big deal such as Autodesk. They usually are not. I've | |
done it a few times as an individual, with the same result. Hence I | |
don't pay too much attention to whatever they say on their website. | |
bilater wrote 19 hours 47 min ago: | |
Depends on the industry I guess but in my experience customers trying | |
to nickel and dime you / concerned about free trials are not the ones | |
you want. | |
g4zj wrote 20 hours 10 min ago: | |
The very sight of the word "trial" makes a bad impression on me. It | |
puts me on the defensive. I'm immediately reminded that I'm being sold | |
a product, rather than offered a solution. | |
I stop thinking about the task I was working on, or what lead me to the | |
product in the first place, and start worrying about the details of the | |
trial. | |
"Am I going to need to enter credit card information to start the | |
trial?" | |
"Will any images I create be watermarked unless I pay a premium?" | |
"Are the features I actually need even available within the trial, and | |
are they actually useful during that time?" | |
I don't want a free trial of anything, ever. I'd rather have a free, | |
community-supported version and a premium version with official | |
support. Or a basic version with free, unlimited access to only the | |
most basic features, and a pro version with more advanced features at a | |
cost. | |
I just need something I can actually use without worry, and when my use | |
case extends beyond the most basic of features, or the software becomes | |
an important part of my daily workflow, I'll happily pay (and I have) | |
for a more powerful version. | |
Terretta wrote 20 hours 8 min ago: | |
> I don't want a free trial of anything, ever. | |
Is this true? You don't take a new make and model of automobile for | |
a test drive? | |
Are you saying you want to pay cash for the test drive? | |
How do you propose comparison shopping for the primary experience of | |
a car which is how it feels driving it? | |
siva7 wrote 20 hours 13 min ago: | |
It's bizarre how many people think that offering free trials doesn't | |
cost the company real money. Especially with a SaaS your trial will be | |
a real bill for someone else. | |
pseudosavant wrote 20 hours 27 min ago: | |
It is my experience that unless you have high variable costs, you | |
should be far more worried about people adopting and using your | |
product than you should be about giving too much away for free. | |
datarez wrote 20 hours 28 min ago: | |
>I added an unlimited trial, a.k.a. a free tier. | |
>What happened next? | |
>Overall sign ups increased | |
Top of the funnel increase is great, but I would be keen to understand | |
whether overall revenue went up. Sometimes free tier attract the wrong | |
type of customers | |
KaiMagnus wrote 20 hours 29 min ago: | |
Yeah, fully agree. Tried to get into Sketch (multiple) times actually | |
via their 30 day trial. But I've repeatedly run out of time testing | |
details and special cases next to the job, so Figma it is. | |
For note taking tools it's also hard. You only get to know the tool and | |
how well you can work with it only after you spend time with it and | |
have some content in there. Hard to do in 14 days. | |
So letting users evaluate the core part of your service without time | |
limit makes sense and it's good to see a successful example of that. | |
gnicholas wrote 20 hours 37 min ago: | |
Seems kind of like a submarine article. Without knowing what this | |
product/service is, it's impossible to know whether a 14 day free trial | |
is appropriate. I don't care to spend the time learning what it is, and | |
without knowing that it's hard to tell if this advice is relevant to | |
other types of products. | |
I also found this data point to tend to indicate that this | |
testing/experimentation was not especially rigorous: | |
> out those that did [ask for an extension] and those that didn't, my | |
conversion rate was higher when they did ask for one. | |
My first thought was that there is selection bias among people who ask | |
for an extension. People who are pretty sure it's not a useful tool for | |
them aren't going to take the time to reach out. | |
XCSme wrote 20 hours 42 min ago: | |
Ok, I sell self-hosted software with a one-time payment (no | |
subscription). Isn't a 14 days trial enough? Would a 30-day trial do | |
better? Or a 60 days one? | |
So far, people who start using the trial usually convert, so | |
lengthening the trial will likely only decrease this. What it could | |
improve, is the number of customers who are willing to start using the | |
trial, thinking 60-days is a lot of free usage. | |
ezekg wrote 18 hours 31 min ago: | |
For Keygen EE, my enterprise self-hosted edition, I do a 30 day | |
no-strings-attached-trial. So it's different for self-hosted | |
software, yes. | |
ezekg wrote 10 hours 16 min ago: | |
Thinking on this more: this wasn't the whole truth. I also have | |
Keygen CE, which is the free self-hosted community edition, which | |
could act as an unlimited-limited free trial (limited in the sense | |
that it excludes EE features). | |
abcd_f wrote 20 hours 55 min ago: | |
> A fourteen-day free trial ainât gonna cut it ... | |
... for things that take longer than that to test. That's rather | |
obvious. There a lot of software that can be evaluated for fit in a | |
couple of hours, especially of a desktop/installable variety. | |
scosman wrote 21 hours 5 min ago: | |
"open, source-available" | |
That punctuation is so critical; I read as "open source available" | |
first time through. I also make "open, source-available" software (aka, | |
source-available). Do folks like this presentation? Or good old | |
"source-available"? | |
crazygringo wrote 21 hours 8 min ago: | |
Even for consumer software, the common 7/14/30-day free trials are | |
bizarre. | |
My general use case is to download and test software to use it a single | |
time, for some random new task I only need that day. To use the | |
software for 5 minutes. | |
Then three months later, oh it turns out I need to do that thing again, | |
or test it out in a new way. It says the trial has expired, even though | |
I only used it for 5 minutes. And I'm not going to pay $$$ just to use | |
it for another 5 minutes and possibly never again. | |
I don't understand why x-day free trials haven't been replaced with | |
usage-based free trials. E.g. whether it's exporting a final result 20 | |
times, or running a filter 50 times, or processing 100 input files, or | |
whatever metric makes sense for the particular product. Or heck, keep | |
it a 14-day free trial but count the days individually -- so if I use | |
it on May 2 and then on May 15, that's only two days. | |
The idea that, as a consumer, I'm going to sit down and fully evaluate | |
a piece of software over the course of 7/14/30 consecutive days to then | |
make a purchasing decision is bizarre. | |
paulddraper wrote 16 hours 24 min ago: | |
> The idea that, as a consumer, I'm going to sit down and fully | |
evaluate a piece of software over the course of 7/14/30 consecutive | |
days to then make a purchasing decision is bizarre. | |
As someone who has made and sold such software, no it is not bizarre. | |
It's very effective. | |
j-cheong wrote 16 hours 42 min ago: | |
>I don't understand why x-day free trials haven't been replaced with | |
usage-based free trials. | |
Hmm I would say usage-based free trials are problematic because a | |
small company might only use it 10 times but an enterprise might need | |
to run 10k files to fully trial the product. So what usage level | |
would you set it at? If you go too high the small companies can be on | |
a free trial for years, effectively a freemium model. | |
meiraleal wrote 17 hours 46 min ago: | |
Weird proposition. In both cases you would pay for the second usage | |
and the free trial just proved that you need their product and they | |
definitely should not let you use it for free | |
dustincoates wrote 19 hours 40 min ago: | |
> I don't understand why x-day free trials haven't been replaced with | |
usage-based free trials. | |
The same reason that people complain about the weapons behavior in | |
Breath of the Wild or why no one uses the fine china: a usage-based | |
trial actually _discourages_ usage. | |
As someone else said, Scrivener offers this. I downloaded it and | |
wanted to give it a try, but I was always hesitant to fire it up. I | |
always felt that if I did use it and realized five minutes in that | |
today wasn't the day I was going to write a lot, then I had wasted | |
one of my 30 days. People as a whole are loss adverse, and so it is | |
with usage-based trials. | |
kelnos wrote 19 hours 43 min ago: | |
So essentially what you're advocating for is a model where some | |
percentage of users can use the software in some limited way, for | |
free, possibly over the span of many months or even years, and the | |
person who built it sees no revenue from that use at all? Sure, as | |
the article describes, that's an unlimited-time free tier. But maybe | |
the developer doesn't want to offer a free tier. | |
> The idea that, as a consumer, I'm going to sit down and fully | |
evaluate a piece of software over the course of 7/14/30 consecutive | |
days to then make a purchasing decision is bizarre. | |
Except you did do that, in your example. You evaluated it over the | |
span of 5 minutes (you didn't even need days or weeks), and then were | |
apparently satisfied enough with it that you remembered it and came | |
back to it months later to use it again. | |
And then you balk at the idea that you should have to pay for | |
something that you already know you get value out of. I find that | |
bizarre. | |
neilv wrote 19 hours 50 min ago: | |
IIUC, the user evaluated it sufficiently for that task, such that | |
they wanted to use it repeatedly for that task, but the software can | |
do a lot more things, and they don't want to pay the price for just | |
that one feature they evaluated so far, before they evaluate the | |
other features? | |
If we're selling consumer software, and our expectation is that | |
people might use it only rarely, and only need a fraction of the | |
features, but get value out of it when they do... can we do free | |
trials without this perception? | |
Don't do free trials? Cripple the trial so that user can see what it | |
can do, but user can't get the benefit they want? Break a big | |
package/suite into many small tools sold separately, to avoid the | |
perception of paying for more than you need or can evaluate? Pay per | |
metered use? Renewable subscription tiers? | |
ghnws wrote 20 hours 21 min ago: | |
Depending on the product, your trial may cost the company a decent | |
amount of money. For example audiobooks are rather expensive to | |
stream (due to publisher pricing, not bandwidth). | |
Spooky23 wrote 20 hours 26 min ago: | |
Itâs an annoying arguably dark pattern and easy to game. | |
Buying behavior is a psychological concept driven by time and | |
attention. A persons mental wallet is open for a limited period of | |
time. The goal of the trial is a conversion to sale. | |
The scenarios you describe are edge case-ish, and often times | |
companies will accommodate them as edge cases. | |
Aurornis wrote 20 hours 27 min ago: | |
> The idea that, as a consumer, I'm going to sit down and fully | |
evaluate a piece of software over the course of 7/14/30 consecutive | |
days to then make a purchasing decision is bizarre. | |
But that's exactly what you described yourself as doing. You | |
downloaded the software, used it, found that it satisfied your needs, | |
and were familiar enough with the software to recognize that you | |
needed it again three months later. | |
The real bizarre thing is that someone can blame the software | |
provider for giving away free use of their software, or for "only" | |
allowing them to use it for 30 days for free. | |
Honestly, I don't understand what model would actually satisfy you | |
while also leaving a window for the software developer to get paid. | |
If someone gave you 14 separate days to run a trial and you utilized | |
the software on the same 3 month schedule, you'd have over 3 years to | |
"evaluate" the software without paying a dime. | |
> The idea that, as a consumer, I'm going to sit down and fully | |
evaluate a piece of software over the course of 7/14/30 consecutive | |
days to then make a purchasing decision is bizarre. | |
I don't understand this complaint, either. You already used the | |
software, saw that it solved your problems, and then knew it well | |
enough to know that you needed it again 3 months later. What more do | |
you want? A full year to think about it while it solves your | |
problems? | |
Would you prefer if the software was usable in "trial" mode | |
indefinitely, but you couldn't actually output anything (save files, | |
get non-watermarked output) until you purchased it? That's the only | |
alternative I can think of that would help you try the software | |
longer, but then you would be forced to pay on the very first use in | |
your example above. That actually leaves you worse off, not better. | |
This whole conversation reminds me of why it's so much easier to deal | |
with B2B and Enterprise software: With cheap consumer software, you | |
get people who will complain to the ends of the earth about your $20 | |
software or jump through hoops to avoid paying less than the cost of | |
a couple drinks to purchase software that clearly solves their needs. | |
paulddraper wrote 16 hours 16 min ago: | |
> why it's so much easier to deal with B2B and Enterprise software: | |
With cheap consumer software, you get people who will complain to | |
the ends of the earth about your $20 software or jump through hoops | |
to avoid paying less than the cost of a couple drinks to purchase | |
software that clearly solves their needs | |
Someone will drop $20 on lunch from some place with no guarantees | |
to its quality and think nothing of it. | |
But asking the same amount for software requires a painstakingly | |
thorough evaluation. | |
--- | |
Products like Gmail, Facebook, Dropbox etc have trained consumers | |
that the normal price of software is $0. | |
crazygringo wrote 20 hours 6 min ago: | |
> But that's exactly what you described yourself as doing. You | |
downloaded the software, used it, found that it satisfied your | |
needs, and were familiar enough with the software to recognize that | |
you needed it again three months later. | |
That's not what happens. I download it, use some tiny part of it | |
once (like the noise reduction filter of a full audio editing | |
suite), forgot about it, googled noise reduction 3 months later, | |
discovered I'd already installed it 3 months ago, and now can't try | |
it with a different file because the trial expired. | |
> The real bizarre thing is that someone can blame the software | |
provider for giving away free use of their software, or for "only" | |
allowing them to use it for 30 days for free. | |
But they deserve the blame, because now I'm going to go download a | |
different audio editing suite to try their noise reduction instead. | |
And if now I keep having to do noise reduction because it's no | |
longer a one-off thing, I'll purchase that competitor. Because the | |
first piece of software stopped letting me try it out so I can't | |
even compare anymore. Even though I'd only used it for 5 minutes. | |
My whole point is that "30 days for free" is meaningless if I only | |
use it for 5 minutes. It makes much more sense for trials to be | |
usage-metered rather than contiguous calendar days. | |
meiraleal wrote 17 hours 30 min ago: | |
They lost nothing by you not using their free trial again tho you | |
are the kind of user that we all try to avoid | |
Dalewyn wrote 18 hours 19 min ago: | |
If you used the program once during the trial period then came | |
back to it again for some reason or another after the trial | |
expired, the trial worked exactly as intended: You want to use | |
the program again, so it's asking you to pay up. | |
I don't see the problem here other than "I don't want to pay for | |
software." which isn't the programmer's concern. If you don't | |
want to pay, the programmer likewise couldn't give a damn if you | |
can't use his program. | |
felipellrocha wrote 20 hours 18 min ago: | |
This makes sense to me. To some people, nothing will be sufficient | |
outside of free. The demand curve predicts this. What is weird is | |
that they're talking as if the problem was with every company | |
trying to get paid (paying the bills? that's for the weak), instead | |
of just simply recognizing that their purchasing power is | |
relatively low. | |
ericd wrote 20 hours 20 min ago: | |
The thing is, I often get called away from whatever I was trying to | |
do, and just donât revisit it for a few weeks, a month. I opened | |
the software, but never actually used it. I go back to it later, | |
whoops, free trial expired. I think x free uses is a much better | |
way to do it, and I as a software maker donât really feel like I | |
need to charge someone who only needs my stuff once or twice, the | |
marginal cost to me is 0. If theyâre getting professional value | |
out of it, or itâs a big part of their day to day for some other | |
reason, then I think they should pay. Theyâre much more likely to | |
make demands of me if theyâre in that bucket, as well. | |
Aurornis wrote 19 hours 42 min ago: | |
> and I as a software maker donât really feel like I need to | |
charge someone who only needs my stuff once or twice | |
A 14-day (or 7, or 30 day) trial is actually perfect for this | |
situation. | |
But you can't make everyone happy. If someone is starting the | |
trial and then not using the software for a week or month, that's | |
their mistake. | |
There was a time when nagware software was popular: You got to | |
use it for free, but it would nag you with a popup or delay every | |
once in a while asking you to purchase it. You can still | |
occasionally find software with this model, but most developers | |
quickly learned that the more leeway you give the free trial | |
users, the less likely they are to buy it. | |
crazygringo wrote 19 hours 8 min ago: | |
> If someone is starting the trial and then not using the | |
software for a week or month, that's their mistake. | |
No, that's your mistake as a software maker. User behavior is | |
user behavior. | |
If you're losing potential paying customers because you lock | |
them out of the trial because they didn't come back to it for a | |
week, it's your sales that will suffer. | |
johnnyanmac wrote 10 hours 32 min ago: | |
>If you're losing potential paying customers because you lock | |
them out of the trial because they didn't come back to it for | |
a week, it's your sales that will suffer. | |
Business are risk averse. They don't care about that as much | |
as the real worst case: you become winRar and you have a lot | |
of paying customers that never convert because you gave away | |
too much of your product. It's really hard to put thst genie | |
back into the bottle. | |
ericd wrote 19 hours 18 min ago: | |
You can say that itâs their mistake, but people not using | |
your software successfully is always a mix of blame for both | |
parties. | |
Yes, you can probably make more by adding more pressure than | |
nagware did. But youâre doing it at the expense of being | |
pro-user. I do think itâs reasonable to be less friendly than | |
that, if it doesnât work for you. | |
You can probably make even more than free trials by getting | |
people into a monthly subscription, making it harder to cancel, | |
and/or making it so itâs easier to forget that theyâre | |
being charged, etc. There are many ways to enrich yourself at | |
the expense of others. And many companies seem to have | |
justified each of these to themselves. | |
Sarkie wrote 20 hours 28 min ago: | |
This is exactly why they need to charge. | |
filmgirlcw wrote 20 hours 38 min ago: | |
But to push back, if youâre talking about a 5 minute task, that | |
youâre using once every few months, a free trial timed the way you | |
are asking, might mean you never end up needing to purchase a | |
license. I understand that that is useful for you, but that isnât | |
exactly good for someone trying to sell a piece of software. (I | |
understand you also gave usage based examples, but even in those | |
scenarios (which require additional work to code for trial versions, | |
versus a pure time-lock), there is always going to be someone who | |
says â5 saves isnât enoughâ or whatever the metric is). | |
> The idea that, as a consumer, I'm going to sit down and fully | |
evaluate a piece of software over the course of 7/14/30 consecutive | |
days to then make a purchasing decision is bizarre. | |
Maybe itâs my past life as a software reviewer (and current life as | |
someone frequently asked about my assessment/opinion on apps), but | |
for consumer software (SaaS, especially for business like what OP | |
article is about, I think is different), I really donât think this | |
is that bizarre. | |
To me, a trial is really instructive because if Iâm finding myself | |
opening or using an app frequently during the trial, thatâs a good | |
indicator Iâll get value out of the application. Similarly, if I | |
did a trial in January for one task, then came back to do that same | |
task again in May and the trial is expired, itâs a good way for me | |
to evaluate if it makes sense for me to buy a license or not. There | |
are some programs I use two or three times a year that I purchase | |
because it is useful enough for that one task, but there are others | |
that I use infrequently enough to try to seek out other options. A | |
time-based trial, for me, is a good forcing function to determine if | |
Iâm actually going to use the program. | |
jasonlotito wrote 17 hours 16 min ago: | |
> There are some programs I use two or three times a year that I | |
purchase because it is useful enough for that one task, but there | |
are others that I use infrequently enough to try to seek out other | |
options. | |
Flip that. I find most people do the second thing first. If what | |
I'm doing in the software takes 5 minutes, chances are I can find | |
something else out there that will do the same thing for free as | |
well. Sometimes the same software lets you trial it again because | |
it's been so long. And so all the additional features you'd review | |
them for amount to nothing when I'm just using them to remove the | |
background in my picture. | |
But here is the bigger issue. | |
> itâs a good way for me to evaluate if it makes sense for me to | |
buy a license or not | |
It's a horrible way for me to evaluate licensing. Why? Because, I | |
probably want to get on with whatever task should only take 5 | |
minutes and do something else. I don't want to spend time | |
evaluating licensing and determine the cost benefits analysis of | |
this software purchase (which more and more tends toward a | |
monthly/yearly fee). | |
I want to do the 5 minute thing and move on, and I will spend more | |
time searching for another free solution than pay. | |
You want to get me to pay you? Make that 5 minutes showcase the | |
things I did't know I needed. | |
And yes, if you have the only thing that can do the thing I'm | |
looking to do, sure. But, a monopoly isn't exactly what we are | |
talking about here. | |
pierrebai wrote 18 hours 8 min ago: | |
The problem with this thinking is that you are creating | |
dissatisfaction for 25 cents. | |
Let's say, you sell your software as a single-version perpetual | |
license. You sell it for 150$. A typical user uses it 8 hours a | |
month. After a year, that's 96 hours. So they spend less than 2$ | |
per hour (I'm rounding in the seller's favor.) So using it for 5 | |
minutes, 1/12h, is less than 25 cents. (Again rounding up in the | |
seller's favor.) | |
Is this about not giving away 25 cents? | |
This is where SaaS wins over, but even there, the overhead, both | |
for sellers and users, of managing payment for people who want to | |
do one-shot work is never going to be worth it. | |
meiraleal wrote 17 hours 39 min ago: | |
This scenario is akin to wanting an insurance payout for a stolen | |
car after paying just the last monthâs premium | |
tylersmith wrote 19 hours 43 min ago: | |
> But to push back, if youâre talking about a 5 minute task, that | |
youâre using once every few months, a free trial timed the way | |
you are asking, might mean you never end up needing to purchase a | |
license. | |
That's why they want that model. Complaints like the GP's are just | |
a thin veil over being too cheap to pay for the software they use. | |
You can see it in the other responses to your comment. | |
kmacdough wrote 20 hours 5 min ago: | |
Counter to your counter, a person using software 5-6 times over a | |
few years is almost never going to become a paying customer. | |
They'll just cut you out entirely. But odds are they know similar | |
professionals and could be a major promoter to potential | |
power-users. Chatting with a few coworkers, none of us can come up | |
with a single example of letting a trial expire, only to pay for | |
isolated uses later. We had quite a few examples of software we | |
thought might be valueable, but weren't prepared to pay having run | |
out our trials. Three of us are in this state for Copilot alone. | |
It seems you're very focused on what people "oughta" pay for. But | |
what matters is simply what people do pay for. You tell this story, | |
but it seems very inconsistent with my experience or my | |
understanding of pricing theory. | |
filmgirlcw wrote 18 hours 7 min ago: | |
> It seems you're very focused on what people "oughta" pay for. | |
But what matters is simply what people do pay for. You tell this | |
story, but it seems very inconsistent with my experience or my | |
understanding of pricing theory. | |
I donât know who the âyouâ is referring to. All | |
I said was that in my personal experience, there have been | |
occasions (not frequent, but it has happened) where Iâll buy a | |
perpetual license to something for a task I use a few times a | |
year. Because the $20 or whatever the license cost was worth the | |
time I saved. In most cases, what I said was that if I didnât | |
use a piece of software after the trial expired, that was a good | |
forcing function to figure out if it was something I find value | |
in or not. And in most cases, the answer is going to be âI | |
donât need to buy this.â | |
Iâm not at all focused on what people oughta pay for so I | |
donât know where you are misreading this. | |
I also said that for business and SaaS options like the OP | |
article is about, things are completely different (your Copilot | |
example). The comment I replied to was about consumer software | |
trials and how they donât think time limits make sense. I | |
happen to disagree. | |
kulahan wrote 18 hours 21 min ago: | |
"It's free advertising" is an argument I see a lot, but I've | |
never seen the numbers to see how much that actually matters in | |
the real world. Well, I guess I've seen some, but it's always | |
from ad companies anyways. | |
plussed_reader wrote 17 hours 28 min ago: | |
When it comes to free advertising/exposure as compensation I | |
think back to my early days on the Oregon Trail: | |
You can die from exposure. | |
didgeoridoo wrote 12 hours 14 min ago: | |
We accept cash, check, and cholera. | |
meiraleal wrote 17 hours 36 min ago: | |
The person using this argument never accepts free advertising | |
as a payment option and this tells everything about the | |
effectiveness of this strategy | |
trogdor wrote 15 hours 18 min ago: | |
I own a media production company. We occasionally sell | |
content to other media outlets. Early in our existence, we | |
were routinely contacted by reporters asking for permission | |
to use our content with credit to us. I used to respond by | |
saying yes, but only if I could use some of their content, | |
with credit to them. Obviously, they never agreed. | |
fuzzythinker wrote 20 hours 6 min ago: | |
That is exactly the point. As a producer of the said software, if | |
that is the user's usage pattern, and there are enough regular | |
users to sustain/pay for these users, then I won't want to charge | |
them. Doing so means I either lose out on potential customers or | |
they aren't going to be a true customer anyways. | |
hinkley wrote 20 hours 13 min ago: | |
I took a job working at a company that made a code | |
obfuscator/minimizer in the days before CI/CD really existed. I | |
knew a lot about Java internals so I thought this would be good. | |
First day I got assigned instead to an embedded Java project. | |
Why? They couldnât market the obfuscator, so they were winding it | |
down. People didnât want a license for something they used for | |
ten minutes four times a year. | |
(We did later hire an intern to fix bugs in the obfuscator. The app | |
was constrained to a specific JAR size, and those gave us enough | |
headroom for about another dozen features. And I made a change | |
late in the project that got me space for two more, via suffix | |
sorting the constant pool instead of prefix sorting it). | |
asah wrote 20 hours 20 min ago: | |
IMHO some light users should be free - niche users who don't have | |
significant budgets or would be a support burden. Others get | |
enormous value in 5 minutes, have easy budgets for this category of | |
software and should be paying. | |
I wouldn't be quick to judge either way. | |
giobox wrote 12 hours 35 min ago: | |
This essentially is how tailscale operates (or did last I was in | |
this space). Home/small use totally free, and experimentation | |
seems encouraged. | |
> [1] I have genuinely deployed tailscale in paying locations on | |
basis of my really positive experience on the "Personal" plan, | |
which is effectively almost the whole product for up to three | |
users/100 devices, for free. | |
I don't think there is a universally right answer for all | |
products/services on this question though. | |
[1]: https://tailscale.com/pricing | |
kelnos wrote 19 hours 41 min ago: | |
It's a little weird to suggest that just because someone wants to | |
use the product of someone else's work only for a short time, | |
that use "should" be free. | |
ska wrote 17 hours 33 min ago: | |
I think the context of âshouldâ matters quite a bit here. | |
For example the claim that everyone should have free access as | |
if by right is quite different than the claim that as the | |
producer of said software this is your best bet. | |
SR2Z wrote 19 hours 1 min ago: | |
I mean, it's not strange to think that the ideal state for | |
software is "used as widely as possible while maximizing | |
profit." | |
HeatrayEnjoyer wrote 10 hours 31 min ago: | |
??? | |
That is very strange. | |
thfuran wrote 18 hours 8 min ago: | |
That's definitely a strange ideal, to put it politely. Human | |
welfare should be maximized instead. | |
amflare wrote 19 hours 24 min ago: | |
If you are offering free samples of your product, you shouldn't | |
get mad at the people who don't need your product for more. | |
jahewson wrote 20 hours 42 min ago: | |
One reason not to do that is the sales and marketing lead time. Every | |
time marketing changes something thereâs a 2 week lag before they | |
can measure the conversion impact. With your usage-based trial | |
concept that lag time becomes indefinite. | |
j45 wrote 20 hours 46 min ago: | |
Paying to keep the tool running for the few moments you need can be | |
extremely expensive to pay for those moments only. | |
Often it's an investment in your life to free up time. You can | |
always get and earn more money, but it's impossible to add more time | |
to your life. | |
I agree not everything has to be a SaaS though, some are better as | |
usage based, or a basic fee plus usage/overage. | |
zamadatix wrote 20 hours 49 min ago: | |
On the flip side (for the company, not the consumer) if you've come | |
back to the tool 3 months later you're already mentally invested in | |
learning the tool, know it works, and remembered it. Either that'll | |
be a paying customer or it won't, giving them 100 input files doesn't | |
really guarantee a sale 7 years from now (or whenever it is they run | |
out). | |
I.e. too short to actually be able to try it is a problem. How long | |
"too short" is varies a lot based on what it is you're selling. Too | |
short to be able to try multiple times may actually be a positive for | |
total sales though, particularly in the consumer software space. As | |
always the answer is "test and see what changes your sales" but that | |
not much does it this way is more likely a hint it doesn't execute | |
well with most models rather than nobody is trying it. | |
crazygringo wrote 20 hours 39 min ago: | |
> you're already mentally invested in learning the tool, know it | |
works, and remembered it. | |
Not really. In my experience, I learned only a tiny percentage of | |
the tool -- like how to run a noise reduction filter and nothing | |
else. I know that one thing worked the one time for that one file, | |
but not for other files with different types of noise. And I didn't | |
even remember it -- I googled "noise reduction software" again, | |
discovered the top link was purple, and only then remembered I'd | |
already installed it on my system and forgotten its name. I started | |
it up and it says I can't use it anymore because the trial expired. | |
I might have a whole bunch of clips I need to noise reduce now, | |
maybe it's going to become a regular thing at this point, but I can | |
only test with competitors' software now... | |
wouldbecouldbe wrote 20 hours 55 min ago: | |
It's not bizarre, it's a common pattern that people understand and | |
easy to implement. Most people will accept it for that reason even if | |
it's not ideal. | |
I have a lower tier that users can move to which is an effective | |
filter to see who really wants to move forward, since our set up & | |
initial support costs are relatively high also on trials. So that | |
works well, even if we make a loss on smaller tiers it's a sign of | |
commitment. | |
YetAnotherNick wrote 20 hours 56 min ago: | |
If you "need" to use for the second time, it is lost revenue to cover | |
that in free trial. Free trial are to give uninterested user interest | |
in the product. If the need is already there, free trial can only | |
make the product impression worse. | |
actuallyalys wrote 20 hours 56 min ago: | |
I think I have seen this model before, in the days of shareware. | |
Offhand, I donât remember the name of the tool. | |
A downside of this is that if you donât choose the right metric, | |
people might burn through a lot of their uses due to mistakes. Like, | |
to use your input files example, imagine someone accidentally selects | |
a huge directory with more than 100 files and then end up with no | |
free uses left. | |
Some of this also comes down to overall UX design too, of course. | |
abcd_f wrote 20 hours 57 min ago: | |
Usage-based trials are much harder to enforce reliably. | |
crazygringo wrote 20 hours 42 min ago: | |
I don't see why. | |
A time-based trial records the date you started to use it | |
somewhere. | |
A usage-based trial records the number of times you've done | |
something somewhere. | |
I can't see why there would be any difference in reliability. The | |
mechanism of recording and checking some value is identical. | |
abcd_f wrote 2 min ago: | |
Time-based trials don't require updating trial state once it's | |
initialized. | |
TheGRS wrote 20 hours 58 min ago: | |
Your example just demonstrates the usefulness of a time-based trial. | |
You personally might not come back but the next customer might. | |
I know everyone complains about Adobe's switch to subscription, but | |
it would fit the model you'd want where you could pay for a month of | |
usage and then turn it back off. | |
crazygringo wrote 19 hours 57 min ago: | |
> You personally might not come back but the next customer might. | |
Then that's a terrible business model. | |
As a business, you want both customers to come back. | |
If a contiguous time-based trial model results in losing half your | |
potential customers, while a usage-based trial model results in | |
keeping all potential customers, then the contiguous time-based | |
trial is objectively terrible. | |
So it doesn't demonstrate the usefulness at all. | |
elevatedastalt wrote 13 hours 10 min ago: | |
Honestly I don't want a customer like OP back. They come across | |
as extremely entitled and the whole post seems to condense down | |
to "I don't want to pay for software, give it to me for free". | |
TheGRS wrote 19 hours 13 min ago: | |
I'm also assuming OP didn't really intend to pay if they're | |
coming to a tool that they'll use for 5 minutes. They don't see | |
the value in paying, I'm just reading between the lines there. | |
Maybe its still better to let them get a long free trial so they | |
tell their friends about it, I dunno. Not a marketer, but it | |
struck me as kind of disingenuous that if you came back to a tool | |
after 3 months where you know you need to use it, they still | |
don't want to pay. | |
Spooky23 wrote 20 hours 21 min ago: | |
Adobe requires annual commit and true up! | |
Even with large relationships, they refuse to provide utilization | |
metrics. So our team has to implement obnoxious processes to | |
validate your use, or pay 15-25% more than we need to. | |
jkaplowitz wrote 18 hours 40 min ago: | |
What you say is probably true for their enterprise deals, but | |
most of their retail plans do offer true month-to-month options | |
for less than double the monthly price of the annual commitment. | |
Itâs a good option when one is only using it for a few months | |
of the year. | |
freeone3000 wrote 20 hours 27 min ago: | |
Except Adobe doesnât let you do that, you pay for an entire year | |
month-by-month; cancelling early still leaves you with a bill. | |
jkaplowitz wrote 18 hours 41 min ago: | |
Most of their subscriptions are available in a true | |
month-to-month plan with cancellation at any time without a fee. | |
But they charge a lot more for that plan. For example, $89.99 for | |
month-to-month vs $59.99 for monthly payments toward an annual | |
plan. Still, itâs the cheaper and better option if youâre | |
only using it for a few months of the year. | |
raincole wrote 20 hours 51 min ago: | |
> Your example just demonstrates the usefulness of a time-based | |
trial. You personally might not come back but the next customer | |
might. | |
Yes, exactly. | |
The parent comment says they are not going to pay to use it for | |
another 5 minutes. So if it were usage-based, would they pay to use | |
it for the 21st times, after they run out the 20 free uses? | |
And they only use it once per three months. So the 21st use is 5 | |
years later. Will the software still be maintined by the time? Will | |
the dev still exist? Will the problem itself still exist? | |
crazygringo wrote 20 hours 46 min ago: | |
I would pay for it by the 21st time. | |
That was my point. If I'm using something for only the 2nd time, | |
then statistically it's very unknown whether I'll ever use a 3rd | |
time. If I paid for it now, there's a good chance I'd be throwing | |
away my money. | |
Whereas if I've used something 20 times, then it's extremely | |
likely I'll be using it another 20, 50, 100, or 1,000 times. It's | |
clearly worth paying for after 20 times. | |
Aurornis wrote 20 hours 23 min ago: | |
> I would pay for it by the 21st time. | |
In your example above (needing it every 3 months) it would take | |
over 5 years to reach that point. | |
I'm going to guess that within those 5 years it's likely that | |
the developer would have released a new major release (with a | |
new trial period), or that you would have reinstalled your OS | |
(resetting the trial timer), or that you would have gotten a | |
new computer... | |
In other words, you'd never pay for the software. | |
crazygringo wrote 19 hours 51 min ago: | |
> In your example above (needing it every 3 months) it would | |
take over 5 years to reach that point. | |
That wasn't my example. It was 3 months between the first and | |
second times. | |
In my experience, your need for a tool often increases | |
gradually. You have a one-off project that needs a tool | |
briefly, then a couple of projects a few months later you | |
need to try it more, then it becomes a regular thing. | |
It's pretty rare that I go from never needing a tool to | |
needing it constantly as an instant switch. Which is the only | |
scenario where 7/14/30-day trials make sense. | |
dijksterhuis wrote 20 hours 19 min ago: | |
You may be failing to see the woods for the trees. Dunno, not | |
OP. | |
> I would pay for it *by* the 21st time. | |
By the 21st time != the 21st time. | |
By the 21st time == at some point prior to the 21st time. | |
Possibly the 5th or 6th time. Maybe the 10th time. Maybe the | |
3rd time. | |
XCSme wrote 20 hours 58 min ago: | |
Well, I sell a website analytics platform, so 14 days are needed for | |
you to gather data and get meaningful insights. Even if you forget | |
about it, and come later, you can still see the data and test the | |
features. | |
Also, the app is self-hosted, so part of the trial benefit is that | |
users can test the installation process, which is usually the biggest | |
push-back against self-hosting. | |
unilynx wrote 20 hours 35 min ago: | |
Would it be possible to always offer the last 14 days of stats, but | |
only allow a login/access to that data eg 3 or 7 times ? | |
I wonder if that might fit the average pattern of a casual stats | |
user a bit better (only actually checking the data when asked by | |
the manager) to keep them hooked for a much longer 'wall clock' | |
time and get them to eventually convert (I've been depending on | |
this for half a year now) | |
XCSme wrote 19 hours 6 min ago: | |
That's a good idea and, in theory, I could implement a lot of | |
different models. | |
In practice, because it's self-hosted, "cracking" might be an | |
issue. Customers might edit the files that affect the retention, | |
for example. Maybe most customers won't do it, but I don't know. | |
This also feels a bit like I would have to implement some "DRM", | |
which I really don't want. | |
Now that you mentioned it, maybe a better trial would be a | |
freemium model, where I can serve a different version for free | |
that only has some features. The problem with this, is that the | |
customer won't get all the benefits of using the product, so they | |
might not like it enough to upgrade to the full version. | |
It's an analytics platform, so I could offer just basic stats for | |
free and for premium all the other features (segments, heatmaps, | |
recordings, A/B tests, AI integration, etc.). This could work as | |
a good marketing technique for the top of the funnel, but then | |
customers would still probably want to trial the pro features, so | |
I am stuck with the same problem as before. | |
ericd wrote 20 hours 12 min ago: | |
Yeah, freemium with a free tier thatâs useful for casual use | |
converts me way more often than time-based trials. | |
XCSme wrote 19 hours 5 min ago: | |
Hmm, but what would make you upgrade from the free tier to | |
premium? Because you still can't try the premium features. | |
Wouldn't I still need to provide a trial for the premium | |
features, for you to decide whether they are worth upgrading? | |
ericd wrote 8 hours 15 min ago: | |
Usually if you think hard, you can find something that a | |
casual user could progress to wanting more of. Or you can do | |
what a lot of companies do and start everyone on a free trial | |
of premium, and then fall back to free. Or the evil route, | |
and make them opt out of premium to downgrade, or it bills | |
them by default. (May they get chargebacked to hell and | |
dropped by their payment processor) | |
p_l wrote 21 hours 1 min ago: | |
Scrivener has an interesting pattern where they offer 30 day trial - | |
but they only count the days you use the software. | |
So if you first play with interface for few days, but end up not | |
attempting to write more of your great next novel for two months | |
because you were swamped with real life, you can come back and | |
there's still most of the trial left. | |
citruscomputing wrote 16 hours 9 min ago: | |
Mp3tag for Mac ( [1] ) does the same - great piece of software, | |
I've used it 6 times and have one day of trial left :) | |
[1]: https://mp3tag.app/ | |
crazygringo wrote 19 hours 59 min ago: | |
Exactly. Great to hear that at least one company does this. It | |
makes perfect sense, because it matches how unpredictable people's | |
lives can be. | |
Just because you offer a 7 day trial and I had time today to try it | |
out a bit, doesn't mean I'll necessarily have any time at all over | |
the next 6 days to finish evaluating it. Life and other work | |
priorities happen. | |
tppiotrowski wrote 20 hours 17 min ago: | |
I think most consumers would agree that this is the fairest model. | |
If I pay for 30 days of Netflix, only charge me for the days I | |
watch so then I feel like I'm using my entire purchase. | |
The current SaaS model is like going to the store and you can only | |
buy 5 gallons of butter or milk and you have one week to use it. It | |
"feels" like most of your money is being "wasted". At least that's | |
my perception. | |
twodave wrote 20 hours 20 min ago: | |
BeyondCompare does this too, and even though Iâve purchased a | |
license I have some machines where I havenât activated it in | |
almost a year of infrequent usage :) | |
realityfactchex wrote 15 hours 50 min ago: | |
Yes, it's really nice IMO that BeyondCompare has this model. | |
After 30 days of ACTUALLY using it (days which are sometimes few | |
and far between, and sometimes more closely spaced) is really a | |
point at which, yes, it's justified to purchase, showing that it | |
has been "the tool of choice" so many times, and likely to be so | |
into the foreseeable near to mid future, too. | |
The trial is critical to a) proving that it does the useful | |
things, b) determining that that it does said specific things | |
better than the alternatives for some relevant definition of | |
better, and c) giving enough of a chance to really learn it well | |
enough to make an informed decision. | |
The free period builds tremendous goodwill, and is a really sane | |
and "nice to the community" choice for a tool that might get used | |
occasionally. It shows the confidence that the market really is | |
there for it in general. People who can/do reap value from it on | |
an ongoing basis will convert. | |
renonce wrote 21 hours 5 min ago: | |
> I don't understand why x-day free trials haven't been replaced with | |
usage-based free trials | |
They want you to pay for it, don't they? | |
What I do think would be worth it is micropayments, so for each usage | |
you will pay just $0.2 or so. Unfortunately such a payment scheme is | |
not practical under current Visa/Mastercard system. | |
Yeroc wrote 17 hours 49 min ago: | |
Sadly, the only micropayments implementation we have is | |
ad-supported apps. It's essentially micropayments. Albeit a very | |
annoying implementation! | |
unilynx wrote 20 hours 39 min ago: | |
Or under any realistic payment system that end users would want to | |
use | |
No offense, but micropayments have to be the most often suggested | |
non-solution to any problem since the "402 Payment required" code | |
was added to the HTTP spec | |
ska wrote 17 hours 29 min ago: | |
I think hypothetical/magic micropayments that just work(TM) | |
actually solve lots of problems. The problem is with the | |
ârealisticâ part, which is why it always comes up. | |
ericd wrote 20 hours 15 min ago: | |
Idk, Iâd pretty happily pay $0.50 to use an infrequently used | |
utility once, if it was totally effortless. But everything wants | |
like $20-30, or even worse, to lock me into some monthly | |
subscription. | |
kulahan wrote 18 hours 19 min ago: | |
That level of effort is something I think matters a lot. If you | |
could make it incredibly easy for people to spend $1-2 (and no | |
more), you could get a TON of money out of people. I dunno how | |
you'd solve that major structural issue, but if you could, it | |
sounds like a goldmine. If nothing else, microtransactions in | |
software would probably explode more than they already have. | |
groestl wrote 21 hours 6 min ago: | |
Browser games, they've nailed it. So if you're talking about | |
gamification: this is what you ought to be talking about. | |
wmil wrote 20 hours 35 min ago: | |
It'd be pretty hilarious if GoLand switched to a mobile pricing | |
model where the IDE is free... But you have to use build gems to | |
run things. You get a fixed number of build gems a week then you | |
can buy more fro $9.99 or $19.99. | |
Your debug gems would recharge after watching a short ad. | |
tithe wrote 21 hours 4 min ago: | |
> Browser games, they've nailed it. | |
Could you elaborate how? | |
Admittedly I don't play browser games, but is it as the parent | |
comment says, trials in browser games are usage-based? | |
mvkel wrote 21 hours 17 min ago: | |
I think the opposite. The trial length is simply a proxy for how long | |
it takes the prospect to actually have the meeting to make the | |
decision. By making it 41 days instead of 14, prospects will sign up | |
and then wait 35 days before logging in a second time to -maybe- trial | |
it. I'll get to that later. | |
That said, any-day trials ain't gonna cut it. | |
It's not about the number of days, it's that a trial is offered at all. | |
Software customers these days (especially B2Bs) have an internal list | |
of hurdles that prevent them from signing up at all. Methodically | |
remove each hurdle, and at the end there is nothing left to do but buy, | |
or ghost. | |
A trial is a hurdle to be jumped. | |
I would bet that the number of paying customers who actually -trialed | |
the software- is 20%. | |
Why? | |
It takes time, effort, resources to set things up in order to trial | |
them. To spend those resources means the purchase already needs to be | |
approved. | |
TLDR saying that you offer a trial at all, for any length of time, is | |
objection handling, not conversion optimization. | |
I'd bet you could say you offer a 3 day trial and see zero change to | |
the funnel %s. | |
The story in the post also doesn't seem to address the problem | |
(lowering TTC): | |
> paid sign ups also increased, with conversion rate staying steady, | |
but now with no manual work. | |
Ok, but did TTC (the problem) go down, or up? | |
mark242 wrote 21 hours 19 min ago: | |
On the contrary - any trial you offer is incorrect. | |
"People won't know the value of my service if they can't use it!" means | |
that you either aren't doing a good enough job showing them the value | |
of your service up front, or you have an incorrect pricing model. | |
Let's take Stripe as an example. It is absolutely free for you to | |
create an account, browse the dashboard, read their API documentation, | |
etc etc etc, but they take their cut of every single financial | |
transaction you do on their platform. There's no trial - either you | |
find value in Stripe's services, or you don't. | |
Notion has a free tier for single user seats because that's their | |
marketing plan. The moment you want to use Notion for what it's built | |
for, team use, you're paying per user - again, there's no trial period | |
there. Same for companies like Atlassian or IFTTT or Zapier or on and | |
on and on. | |
"You get our full service for X days for free, then you have to start | |
paying" is incorrect for _all_ values of X. Either, "you have to pay to | |
be a user of myproduct.com" or "you can be a free user of myproduct.com | |
but once you get to a level where you're serious about using the | |
product, you have to pay" is the correct strategy. | |
naltroc wrote 21 hours 17 min ago: | |
OP provides data on time-to-convert at various timescales. It looks | |
like it's working for them. | |
mark242 wrote 17 hours 24 min ago: | |
Yes, I read the article. 90 percent of their signups are within 130 | |
days. That's not a great funnel. | |
I'd be curious to see the breakdown of SaaS vs self-hosted | |
customers. | |
Again, imagine what the funnel would look like if the page simply | |
said, "First 100 license keys are free forever. Then pay $0.005 per | |
license key issued." | |
That's a very, very easy opex cost for a developer (and a finance | |
department!) to understand. | |
Right now you can get 50 "ALU"s for free per month but the page | |
doesn't say that at all on first glance; you have to move your | |
slider to the left in order to get that offer. Instead there's so | |
much complexity on that page. API requests per day. Number of | |
licenses. "Number of policies" (whatever that means?!?). Number of | |
products. | |
Devs, please please please simplify. | |
sct202 wrote 21 hours 20 min ago: | |
A company recently denied us a trial extension, even though they could | |
tell we barely got to use their software by the time they got around to | |
granting us trial licenses after a series of sales pitch meetings. We | |
ended up signing with their competitor, who was patient and gave us a | |
few free credits instead that we could work thru on our own pace. | |
Both companies knew that we had been paying a different 3rd company | |
quadruple | |
either of their rates, so I was baffled that the first company would | |
basically write us off so quickly when we were openly motivated to | |
switch. | |
nickjj wrote 21 hours 21 min ago: | |
High pressure time offers that are only known after signing up kind of | |
stink too. | |
I've never used Uber in my life but I'll be traveling internationally | |
next month for the first time so I figured it wouldn't hurt to install | |
Uber now to get a feel for what the UI is like. | |
As soon as I signed up Uber was like, hey we'll give you 50% off your | |
4th ride if you complete 3 rides within 14 days. I won't even be | |
traveling by the time the offer runs out. All this does is make me feel | |
like I made a mistake for signing up too early without knowing anything | |
was going to happen. | |
zamadatix wrote 20 hours 57 min ago: | |
Uber goes nuts with offer notifications until you find the page to | |
turn ALL of them off (quite a few, and broken out by category like | |
Uber Eats vs Uber). The overall app is good enough, it's just a | |
unfortunately spammy. | |
As a ridiculous example: I took an Uber from an office to the | |
Indianapolis airport then an Uber from the Dallas airport to a hotel | |
for the night. As I'm winding down for the night I get a notification | |
from Uber: "Need a ride back to ${indianapolisOffice}?". | |
robocat wrote 6 hours 27 min ago: | |
I install Uber to use it when I need it because I only need it | |
occasionally, and I deinstall it after I've used it. Solves spam | |
and prvacy issues. | |
eszed wrote 14 hours 26 min ago: | |
Oh, thank you! I just turned all of those off, and am looking | |
forward to fewer emails and push notifications. | |
JonChesterfield wrote 20 hours 58 min ago: | |
On the bright side Uber now has the right country set for you. I | |
signed up in Belgium and Uber is now convinced that's where I am | |
based for all of time. | |
zamadatix wrote 20 hours 56 min ago: | |
I had something similar once but editing "Location" in [1] fixed it | |
for me. YMMV | |
[1]: https://riders.uber.com/profile | |
0xbadcafebee wrote 21 hours 39 min ago: | |
Hey SaaS. Here's what I want from you (re: sign-ups): | |
1. Show me your price, with multiple pricing tiers. The more tiers you | |
have, the more likely I am going to pick one of them, because I will | |
think "well this lower tier is quite the deal compared to the higher | |
tiers!". If I am an Enterprise customer, I will disregard you as an | |
option if I can't see a price. Don't even show me the tier at all if | |
you aren't going to show me your price. I get immediately incensed when | |
I see that "Contact us for pricing!" bullshit, because I know how much | |
bullshit I am in for if I just want to get a quote, so I look for | |
somebody else. I want to use your product right now. But I'm not going | |
to use it if I think it will be painful to work with your company, or | |
that you might have exorbitant pricing, or you're just looking for | |
whales. Don't make me discount you. | |
2. Let me use your product, immediately. Let me run it from my laptop | |
immediately. Let me spin up a PoC. Show me your complete reference docs | |
immediately. Show me a toy implementation w/source. I want to know if | |
this will [eventually] give me what I want, within 15 minutes. Do that | |
and you will already have gone above and beyond 95% of SaaS (in my | |
mind). | |
3. Let me have gradient pricing. Let me sign up right away and start | |
using your product for $0, for 5 users. Send me an e-mail when I have 7 | |
users, informing me that I have 30 days to either reduce the number of | |
users to 5, or it will automatically upgrade my account and charge me | |
more (or make me confirm, or whatever). Same for the next tier, etc. | |
(or 'pre-purchase' discounts vs 'on-demand' overage cost, etc) This | |
gives me flexibility: I know our workflows won't just stop working when | |
we hit a limit, and I can acquiesce to the new price or clean up old | |
users. | |
4. Let me start using your product without a card on file. Sometimes it | |
takes a while to find the right corporate person with the right corp | |
card (if they even let me use a corp card, rather than invoicing). If | |
you really need a card, give me 15-30 days, and then pause my account | |
if you have to. The point is to let me get "hooked" on your product | |
without needing to figure out which card to use first. (It goes without | |
saying that when the card expires or a charge doesn't go through, give | |
me 30 days to resolve it, because usually the corp card has hit its | |
limit) | |
nlh wrote 17 hours 47 min ago: | |
So it's interesting. Everything you ask for here is something I, | |
personally, as an independent wanna-get-my-hands-dirty nerd, would | |
ask for too. I totally get where you're coming from. | |
But the thing is - the reason large companies often don't give folks | |
like you and me these things is becuase there are proven reasons to | |
do the contrary that actually end up making them more money. It | |
sucks, but it's reality. | |
1. "Call us" pricing works because for big enterprise deals (4-7+ | |
figures), there's often some serious negotiation involved and if you | |
just show a sticker price up front, you risk a) scaring the buyer | |
because the price is too high, b) losing the buyer because your | |
competitor will just negotiate a better price than your listed price | |
or b) leave yourself no room to negotiate if you really put your best | |
price on the website. | |
2. Offering immediate free trials where you can jump in right away | |
is the ideal world for nerds -- again, I love it personally. But | |
software is often complex, and a guided demo/implementation is often | |
the best path to make sure your buyers are actually successful. | |
Otherwise you risk a lot of folks who sign up, jump in, have no idea | |
what they're doing, and then abandon the trial immediately and go to | |
a competitor who held their hand. | |
3. "Let me sign up right away and start using your product for | |
$0..." If only offering Freemium were so simple. You will | |
immediately have to deal with porn (it's always porn - and often | |
kiddie porn. These people will figure out incredibly creative ways | |
to use your SaaS product to host illegal content one way or another), | |
spam, fraud, customer service issues, etc. There are many valid | |
reasons to offer Freemium. There are many valid reasons not to do | |
so. It's just not so simple. | |
4. Again, think about the flip side here. Lower friction to | |
sign-ups without a card, but SO much hassle when it comes time to pay | |
-- now you have to nag, bug, etc. to get payment, and then you have | |
to delete accounts that are dormant. And you have much lower buying | |
intent signals, etc. etc. etc. | |
I wish the world of software catered to folks like us, but I fully | |
and completely understand why it doesn't. | |
eszed wrote 14 hours 29 min ago: | |
You're dead on with all of this. To add to your point, the worst | |
and most regrettable software product my company uses would have | |
been immediately exposed as non-viable had I been allowed to get my | |
hands dirty and run a couple of test cases. As it was, the | |
sales-person "yada-yada'd" my technical questions (more fool me, | |
yes, but I didn't know enough about their internals - the primary | |
cause of our discontent stems from a truly stupid database-design | |
decision) and so I lacked the context to make an informed decision. | |
(I'm more experienced and more suspicious now; I don't think I'd | |
make the same mistake again.) You can add borderline-fraudulent | |
sales practice and avoiding discovery of truly bad products to the | |
list. | |
ShakataGaNai wrote 15 hours 36 min ago: | |
> 1. "Call us" pricing works because for big enterprise deals (4-7+ | |
figures), there's often some serious negotiation involved and if | |
you just show a sticker price up front, you risk a) scaring the | |
buyer because the price is too high, b) losing the buyer because | |
your competitor will just negotiate a better price than your listed | |
price or b) leave yourself no room to negotiate if you really put | |
your best price on the website. | |
I'd disagree and say this can go either way. As an enterprise buyer | |
I know both MY budget and that all numbers are negotiable - to some | |
extent. If you show me that this product costs $100k and my budget | |
is $80k, I'll still talk to you. But if you list $100k and all I've | |
got is $25k for the budget, yes, I'm going elsewhere. | |
Now you might argue "We can make something work" I'm concerned. | |
You'll do 80% off deal? Clearly you don't think your product is | |
worth what you list so... now I don't think so either. And the "But | |
We've got a tier for that" then list it. | |
My time is way valuable to me. I do not want to go through 3 | |
screening calls, a shit ton of hoops, and a 2 week wait... just to | |
find out that your product is way too expensive for my budget. | |
Especially when getting into those sales calls where the reps wanna | |
play coy and say "Well whats your budget" or "Well it really | |
depends, we want to get into a POC bla bla bla to understand your | |
useless before providing a pricing". Ain't no one got time for that | |
shit. Give me the MSRP up front (with the understanding that a deal | |
may be reachable if it's a little much) or I'm walking. | |
Keep in mind that when I'm pricing your product I'm probably | |
pricing 3 to 5 others. There is literally not enough hours left in | |
my life to give each and every vendor a 5 hours of time in order to | |
get a price. | |
Fortunately the world is shifting. You know who's pricing is | |
available on their website? Salesforce. Okta. OneLogin. Ping. | |
Slack. Github. Gitlab. AWS. Google. Microsoft (for some). Elastic. | |
Tailscale. Adobe. Databricks. Datadog. Cloudflare. Zoom. ... The | |
list goes on. In other words there are a lot of companies out there | |
with their prices available on their website right this second. | |
Sure, almost everyone of them has a "Enterprise call us for | |
pricing" option and that's fine, as long as you've got something | |
for me to start with. | |
If you're a software vendor and don't have some prices to start | |
with, you're at a major disadvantage. Because your competitors | |
often do. And price is not the only thing buyers are looking for. | |
If it was, Okta would have no business. You can look at their | |
prices and OneLogin and Ping's (and Azure AD and Google). The | |
entire IAM/SSO space has their prices right out front and Okta | |
is... the most expensive. Yet somehow they all still are selling. | |
levocardia wrote 17 hours 20 min ago: | |
Indeed many of these "complaints" are explicitly designed to filter | |
out high-maintenance, needy, and stingy customers, leaving you with | |
the people who are more than happy to say "shut up and take my | |
money." | |
999900000999 wrote 21 hours 41 min ago: | |
Rate limit free users. | |
If I sign up on Monday, I might not even look at the API docs until | |
Friday. Assume the week after that I personally like it, if I'm at a | |
bigger company I'm probably going to spend a month or two just getting | |
approval to expense it. | |
ezekg wrote 21 hours 27 min ago: | |
Agreed. I have usage limits (e.g. 100 active users), as well as a | |
hard limit of 2k API requests a day for the free tier. This provides | |
freedom i.r.t. PoCs but restricts production usage. | |
liotier wrote 21 hours 0 min ago: | |
And if the user indefinitely uses the service within the free tier, | |
they are not the target customer anyway - so count the | |
infinitesimal usage as evangelization ! | |
aidenn0 wrote 21 hours 43 min ago: | |
I wonder how a free-tier compares to a 6- or 12-month free trial | |
period. | |
alkonaut wrote 21 hours 46 min ago: | |
Donât do limited time trials. Please. A limited trial means Iâm | |
going to have a worse dev experience with deadlines, activation or loss | |
of functionality. Having a time limited trial or even a requirement to | |
submit an email in order to try something is a big turnoff when | |
evaluating a product. | |
Just make the product free for non commercial use (including a trial in | |
a commercial setting). If I need support or want to buy something | |
please let me contact support or sales. I donât want an automated | |
email from Jeff at Randomcorp asking me how my trial is going. If a | |
trial has to take 30 days or 365, just let me finish. | |
jessriedel wrote 21 hours 47 min ago: | |
> You may be thinking â what does this have to do with | |
time-to-convert? | |
> We'll get there. | |
Just FYI, I consider this tease-based writing to be reader-hostile, the | |
prose equivalent of clickbait. It's the surest way to get me to quit | |
reading. | |
Gbox4 wrote 18 hours 25 min ago: | |
I disagree. I feel like this is something they teach you to do in | |
composition classes - i.e. a hook. | |
jessriedel wrote 16 hours 53 min ago: | |
There are all sorts of things taught in composition class that do | |
not promote learning/understanding | |
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote 21 hours 15 min ago: | |
I don't think so. The author is acknowledging that there is a very | |
obvious question they need to answer and doesn't want to leave the | |
reader in doubt about whether they will answer it, but wants to | |
finish making a different point first. | |
It's almost the opposite of reader-hostile. | |
ropejumper wrote 21 hours 27 min ago: | |
Have you read the article? It's not clickbait, it literally goes on | |
to explain it, and it's only a couple paragraphs. I honestly don't | |
see the issue, and the fact that the author acknowledged a potential | |
question is IMO a good thing. | |
jessriedel wrote 16 hours 46 min ago: | |
If this were really the justification, there are almost always | |
better ways to do it. ("If you're wondering about X, see section | |
N". Or just link to it.) | |
Like other dark patterns, there times when this sort of thing can | |
make sense, but in practice it's usually done (consciously or not) | |
to get the reader to read more than they would otherwise. | |
dangus wrote 21 hours 51 min ago: | |
In B2B sales something that can happen with extension of free trials is | |
that companies doing window shopping, doing competitive analysis, or | |
who arenât motivated to find a solution to an immediate need (donât | |
fit the ideal customer profile) and essentially donât intend to buy | |
will do half-hearted integration and extend trials. Itâs a runaround | |
which ends up costing your sales organization valuable time and effort. | |
Usually itâs just a matter of the implementers on the prospect side | |
not prioritizing the effort. | |
A free trial should usually be followed by a proof of value where both | |
parties are committed to implementing the solution in a realistic way | |
with the expectation of a signed contract if the proof of value | |
delivers on the customer requirements. | |
This could be something to be careful of if that applies to you. | |
kennykning wrote 21 hours 51 min ago: | |
great post! off to calculate TTC for my company right now.. | |
jt2190 wrote 22 hours 4 min ago: | |
The author does a really good job of describing the tension between the | |
customerâs readiness and the vendorâs need to move leads through | |
the pipeline as fast as possible: | |
> What I was really asking potential customers to do was wait. | |
> Wait until they're ready to start understanding the API. | |
> Wait until they're ready to go through onboarding. | |
> Wait until the PoC is planned. | |
> ⦠| |
> What ends up happening is that people get busy and they end up seeing | |
that 14 day deadline, determine that they're not ready yet, so they | |
bounce until they are ready, but then they never come back. | |
> I decided that I needed to remove that friction. I wanted to capture | |
these leads as soon as they decide Keygen may be the solution for them. | |
So ultimately, I can start nurturing these leads. | |
Iâd love to hear more about what ânurturingâ looks like. | |
semireg wrote 22 hours 13 min ago: | |
I develop barcode and label design software. My app is immediately | |
usable after download, but it will print a watermark when not licensed. | |
Users can start a 14 day free trial to remove the watermark. Since | |
itâs a desktop app, each trial is locked to that one computer. I can | |
keep track of which computers register for a trial and limit the | |
duration for subsequent re-registrations. Itâs all based on JWT. | |
batterylow wrote 22 hours 17 min ago: | |
I run a plotting/visualization library. | |
Instead of a time-limited trial, we have just one of the plot types | |
(Sankey) freely available indefinitely ( [1] ). | |
We tried a time-limited trial, and we just ended up with people | |
re-registering new accounts every 2 weeks. | |
[1]: https://plotapi.com/page/sankey/ | |
glonq wrote 22 hours 18 min ago: | |
Just last week, I abandoned a 7-day trial of some project management | |
software because it was not enough time for me to feel comfy with it. | |
Would have preferred a week or two more, even if features were somehow | |
nerfed (watermarks, etc). | |
egberts1 wrote 22 hours 21 min ago: | |
Two months and they're hooked ... or not. | |
ProllyInfamous wrote 21 hours 22 min ago: | |
I'd say this is about correct... my new Toyota came with 3 months of | |
free satelite radio, and it was at about 2 months casual usage that I | |
decided "I'm going to actually sign up" [after having enough time to | |
explore multiple channels]. | |
Had it only been "1 month free" I would not have explored enough to | |
sign up. | |
mouzogu wrote 22 hours 26 min ago: | |
a software i paid for 10 years ago recently got bought by another | |
company. | |
they immediately added bs "features" like dark theme, changed to | |
subscription model with 1 year sub price 3x what i paid to buy it | |
outright, and reduced trial from 30 to 12 days | |
piracy is the only true form of digital ownership. | |
cableshaft wrote 22 hours 9 min ago: | |
Me and Adobe right there. | |
They want me to pay a subscription, but as long as Windows will still | |
open CS6, I'll keep using it. It still gets the job done for me, even | |
though I wouldn't mind some of the newer features (some of my | |
annoyances I know they've improved in the new version) and probably | |
would have paid for an upgrade by now if it wasn't all subscription | |
models now. | |
And hopefully by the time it stops working, another non-subscription | |
option for Illustrator that I don't hate will be available. | |
EricE wrote 21 hours 36 min ago: | |
A great list of alternatives has been floating around on Twitter | |
after their AI debacle: [1] I really enjoy the Affinity tools; they | |
more than meet my modest requirements. | |
[1]: https://twitter.com/WayneTalbot/status/1786703024330588237 | |
cableshaft wrote 21 hours 20 min ago: | |
I didn't like Affinity or Inkscape when I tried them (I even | |
bought Affinity on a sale in order to try it, so I own it). | |
Affinity also had issues importing my CS6 Illustrator files, | |
IIRC, and since I have hundreds of those for various board game | |
designs of mine that I still go back to and rework when I have a | |
new idea for them, the fact that it couldn't play nice with them | |
made it pretty much a nonstarter. | |
It's been a while since I've used Inkscape, but I remember it | |
feeling clunky and buggy for me, and I had difficulty getting | |
into the workflow. | |
I'm sure I could probably force myself to get used to, and | |
probably enjoy alternatives, but the more I invest in these | |
proprietary alternatives, the harder it will be to shift anything | |
back to Illustrator if I need to, especially since I don't think | |
any of them bother to output to a CS6 friendly file format | |
anymore, so I can shift to them, but I can't easily shift out of | |
them. | |
And at this point Illustrator CS6 is just dead simple for me, I | |
don't have to think about where anything is, I know exactly what | |
I need to do for like 98% of what I want to do on it, and most of | |
it is muscle memory, I can whip up some cards in a few hours | |
while watching TV shows in the background. | |
It's going to take something significant (like it no longer | |
working) to motivate me enough to upgrade. I know I'm playing | |
with fire a bit, since these files are getting more and more out | |
of date, and may not import nicely into even the subscription | |
Adobe Illustrator at some point, but I already have too much | |
other shit I have to learn all the time for my day job, I don't | |
have much left outside of that (maybe eventually I will. I am | |
starting to learn Logic Pro and Ableton Live for making music | |
finally, and for the longest time I only used FLStudio). | |
That's a cool graphic though. I'll download it for future | |
reference. Also it'll be easier for me to convert for other Adobe | |
products, like I mostly use Paint.NET instead of Photoshop | |
nowadays, for example. Illustrator is the main one I feel I have | |
to stick with. Also Flash, since it doesn't exist in any newer | |
ones (I used to make Flash games, so if I want to open those FLA | |
files again, I need it). | |
sib wrote 21 hours 28 min ago: | |
>> I really enjoy the Affinity tools; they more than meet my | |
modest requirements. | |
[1]: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/press/newsroom/canva-pr... | |
kuschkufan wrote 22 hours 32 min ago: | |
OT, but your HTML is not valid. is declared twice. | |
7thaccount wrote 22 hours 33 min ago: | |
Even 30 days is useless for me with my schedule on some items. Some of | |
the optimization solvers are annoying that way if you're trying to get | |
a proof of concept together to get management buy-in, but it'll take a | |
lot of development to get there. You can use one of the generic | |
libraries that abstracts away the solver (where you can plug most | |
vendors in) and start with an open source option, but it's an annoying | |
approach if I think there's a strong chance we'll end up with a | |
particular vendor as I'd want to use their native API and avoid the | |
additional abstraction layer. | |
I totally understand why it makes sense to the business, it's just hard | |
to work it in to my schedule. | |
Another thing for these companies to think about is a potential | |
customer is investing their own time in learning your product. They may | |
not act on it right away, but I've been in situations where we had an | |
"oh crap" moment and I was able to say go get product X, I know it | |
works on our data sets and already have example scripts for how we can | |
use it and the vendor indicated a price of Y last year which is like | |
1/5 the cost this other vendor just quoted you to start implementing | |
this from scratch. Allowing employees some creativity to scratch that | |
itch seems to constantly pay off in my experience as long as they're | |
still being successful at their main job. | |
ang_cire wrote 22 hours 36 min ago: | |
It seems obvious that the conversion rate was higher among people who | |
wanted extensions, because the people who don't are the ones who | |
already decided not to use it; rarely are people going to turn down | |
more free time to use something and rush to ask to be allowed to pay | |
for it (though it does happen- I've been part of procurements that were | |
being rushed to use an existing FY budget, for instance). | |
Another thing you need to work out, imo, is what level of *feature use* | |
in your application best maps to conversions, and from there, how can | |
you improve the likelihood of people seeing the benefits of that | |
feature use. | |
As an example, my current company's app can be used with or without | |
agent deployments, and we saw that trials that deployed agents- even | |
just one-off ones in lab envs- converted at a far higher rate than | |
non-agent trials. | |
So we worked to lower the perceived barrier of entry that agent | |
deployments posed, which meant more people seeing the increased | |
usefulness they provided, which meant more conversions. | |
ezekg wrote 10 hours 26 min ago: | |
I think you misunderstood, or maybe I wasn't clear in my post. This | |
wasn't an experiment on 2 separate groups; this was an experiment on | |
the same group: those that convert from trial to paid. When I did X, | |
conversion rate for the entire group increased, i.e. I made more | |
money. If I stopped X, I'd make less money. That then lead me to the | |
point of the post -- the % difference in conversion rate were the | |
people who weren't actually ready but signed up for a trial anyways, | |
only to run out of time and never come back. | |
Sharlin wrote 22 hours 5 min ago: | |
> It seems obvious that the conversion rate was higher among people | |
who wanted extensions, because the people who don't are the ones who | |
already decided not to | |
use it | |
Yeah, exactly! Those two groups are not the same, there's an obvious | |
selection effect there. | |
nikolajan wrote 22 hours 42 min ago: | |
I get the sense that a 2 month trial would have been a better option | |
(41 days + buffer). It provides clients with the required amount of | |
time to get up and running while also time boxing them and applying | |
some pressure on them to commit. | |
An unlimited free trial falls into the same trap of customers leaving | |
until they're "ready" to integrate, time boxing it sort of forces them | |
to commit to the integration at some point. | |
mason55 wrote 22 hours 30 min ago: | |
I could certainly be abnormal, but I'm much more likely to sign up | |
for something that has a real free tier. There's honestly very | |
little difference to me between 60-day free trial and just having to | |
pay from the start, I know that once I do the work to integrate then | |
I'm committing to having to pay. At least for a startup with little | |
revenue and little cash, 60 days is just too soon to commit to having | |
to pay, unless it's like $10/mo. | |
What's worked better for me is the "startup scholarship" that a lot | |
of companies are doing now. A year is far enough away that we'll | |
either be out of business or have the cash to pay, and I don't need | |
to worry that I'm getting my money's worth by the time the 60-day | |
trial ends. | |
I'm a big fan of Posthog right now because they have both a generous | |
free tier & a generous startup scholarship. I've moved a ton of | |
stuff to their platform. | |
A lot of it probably depends on your product though. If you're | |
solving a very targeted problem then you might not be able to create | |
a reasonable free tier. But a lot of B2B tech stuff is like... sure | |
you can charge a bunch of users $5 apiece, but you risk missing the | |
signup of the one user that was going to pay you $10k. Anything with | |
usage-based pricing is going to have Pareto distributed revenue and | |
you need to do everything you can to make sure you're capturing those | |
customers on the tail. | |
ezekg wrote 21 hours 33 min ago: | |
> There's honestly very little difference to me between 60-day free | |
trial and just having to pay from the start, I know that once I do | |
the work to integrate then I'm committing to having to pay. | |
Yep. That's the problem with timed free trials. It applies pressure | |
to sign up only within your magical goldilocks timeframe, otherwise | |
you'll likely bounce because you're not ready to start your | |
14/30/41/60/etc. day eval. | |
ezekg wrote 22 hours 37 min ago: | |
I don't think it would make a considerable difference. Not mentioned | |
in the post, but I have a limited unlimited free trial. Taking into | |
account the usage limits, it's not useful for a production deployment | |
so it applies pressure once integrated. That way I only apply | |
pressure to those that actually integrated. | |
If I were to do a timed trial again, it'd apply pressure to evaluate | |
and plan the integration right now, and the product may not even be | |
at the stage where they're ready to do that yet i.e. still in dev. | |
This needlessly applies friction, which I want to avoid doing until | |
they're ready. | |
TillE wrote 22 hours 45 min ago: | |
Time limited trials are always a feels-bad moment for me, an extra | |
deadline I now have to plan around. | |
Another option I like is providing some amount of free credit that | |
doesn't expire. So you're not on the hook for providing a "free tier" | |
forever, but users can play around with your service at their own pace. | |
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote 19 hours 12 min ago: | |
Time-based free trials are fine for one-time purchases I think. It's | |
basically the equivalent of a return window, without collecting money | |
upfront. | |
Where they don't make sense is for subscriptions, because | |
subscriptions are by definition something your users will be using | |
for a long time, and it might take them a while to realize all of its | |
value and get hooked. | |
For this stuff a free tier that funnels customers to the paid tiers | |
usually works best. You can play with limitations by restricting | |
features, or usage, or anything else, but you probably shouldn't | |
restrict them based on how much time has elapsed since they first | |
signed up. Let them get hooked at their own pace. | |
raldi wrote 21 hours 20 min ago: | |
Exactly. Another good model for certain kinds of product is to allow | |
unlimited use of a limited dataset. | |
cableshaft wrote 22 hours 13 min ago: | |
I also don't mind something like '30 days' or '60 days', but it only | |
counts the days when you open the application. | |
Like a few weeks ago I was motivated to learn some music production | |
software, so I downloaded a few trial versions. I worked on it | |
heavily for a few days, but then got busy with other things, and now | |
that 30 day trial or whatever is coming up to an end, but I still | |
don't feel like I've had a chance to decide if it works for me, | |
because I haven't been actively using it that long yet still. I do | |
plan to go back to it, just maybe not for another week or two. | |
But if it only counted the days I opened the application, I'd still | |
have like 26 'days' left to evaluate them (they might, I haven't | |
checked), and it'd be no big deal, and I wouldn't have to feel all | |
stressed out because I'm 'wasting' the demo time by actually having a | |
life and maybe badly timing when to trigger the trial period. | |
bombcar wrote 21 hours 59 min ago: | |
This has happened time and time again with B2B systems - I sign up | |
for a trial, begin poking it, and then work happens and by the time | |
I go back the trial is dead. | |
kevincox wrote 22 hours 30 min ago: | |
This is what I am doing (business to consumer) and I am quite happy | |
with it. I am maybe a bit too generous with the free credits (many | |
people can use the service lightly for over a year on the trial) but | |
I like that they get the exact experience as if they were paying and | |
they can pause and resume their trial with no extra complexity on my | |
end. Just sign up and you get some starting credits. Then you can | |
just buy more as you need them. I think it makes things simpler and | |
avoids any sort of pressure. | |
gregmac wrote 22 hours 19 min ago: | |
This would work for B2B as well. | |
Sometimes there's a shifting business priority, and guess which | |
wins when the choice is "important customer X is on fire" vs "our | |
developer trial for wizbang component xyz is going to expire in 8 | |
days". | |
simonsarris wrote 22 hours 49 min ago: | |
I sell a JS/TS graphing library, so B2B, developer-to-developer. | |
We decided to just have an indefinite trial period (library has a | |
watermark) and instead offer 30 days of free support. That way we can | |
help people get started and realize their proof of concept, but if they | |
want to start evaluating on their own time they can do so without | |
worrying about any clock. This makes it much easier for customers who | |
are trying to evaluate multiple options at once. | |
go_prodev wrote 22 hours 36 min ago: | |
I'm always exploring new graphing libraries. Are you happy to share | |
a link to yours? | |
martincmartin wrote 22 hours 31 min ago: | |
If you click on their username, it takes you to their profile. [1] | |
which says: | |
I make GoJS, a powerful canvas-based diagramming library: [2] Which | |
is not what I think of a graphing (time series, x-y points joined | |
by lines), but otherwise seems relevant to their comment. | |
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=simonsarris | |
[2]: http://gojs.net/ | |
newswasboring wrote 22 hours 18 min ago: | |
It's very surprising to me that there is a market for this. But | |
then again I have spent almost my entire professional programming | |
career writing matlab. How does one even identify such a market? | |
I am so curious, please share your story. | |
cess11 wrote 22 hours 1 min ago: | |
You can make it a business to build and license a JavaScript | |
calendar widget. Many companies would rather buy such a library | |
than have their developers pick something FOSS or develop on | |
their own. | |
simonsarris wrote 22 hours 10 min ago: | |
The extremely condensed story of my company (started ~1995 when | |
I was a tiny child, I joined 2010, though now I am part owner) | |
was a bunch of guys in an advanced research division of | |
Digital, trying to make a visual programming language. After | |
Digital went under they kept trying to do this, but no one | |
wanted the language. People however were interested in the | |
graphic tech used to make the language, so they turned that | |
into a library, in the 1990s, called Go++ (Graph Objects for | |
C++). | |
Then JGo (Java), GoDiagram (C#, WinForms and now Avalonia), | |
GoXam (XAML/WPF C#), and GoJS. | |
I began GoJS as a greenfield project starting in 2010-2011 as a | |
new grad by working with these guys who had been thinking about | |
diagrams for years. So it had the advantage of being built from | |
scratch (and using the brand new HTML Canvas surface) but with | |
all the accumulated experience of their wisdom at hand any time | |
there were design questions. In some sense I got really lucky | |
to work on such a "brand new, but charted path" project. Not | |
many new grads get that kind of experience... | |
When we released GoJS I was unsure if anyone would actually pay | |
for JavaScript library. There weren't too many I could find in | |
the space that weren't free (Sencha was one I found while doing | |
research, and funny enough they tried to recruit me, flew me | |
out to CA after I wrote a book about canvas circa 2013). But | |
the problem space really truly is large, and you can save a | |
year or more of development time by buying such a library, so | |
the calculus is very worth it for many companies. Like so many | |
people, what we sell is time, and having thought hard about | |
these problems for so long, from layouts to really mundane | |
undo/redo transactional stuff. | |
recursivecaveat wrote 17 hours 21 min ago: | |
Can I ask how large your library can scale to? We have | |
digraphs in the range of tens to hundreds of thousands of | |
nodes, and every tool I've tried falls over. The layered | |
digraph example from your site seems to hang forever at 10k, | |
but that could just be how the example widget is set up. | |
neeleshs wrote 21 hours 54 min ago: | |
This is very true in my experience as well. | |
This is a key component for any good low/no code platform, | |
process builders, workflow builders , process documentation | |
and so on. And that is just one area. | |
It makes tons of sense to buy/use a library like this rather | |
than build your own (unless that is your business). | |
We use one from antd. Antiquated and hard to automate | |
testing. We are looking for a more modern solution. | |
How compatible is GoJS with web testing tools? Most seem to | |
have trouble with canvas. | |
simonsarris wrote 21 hours 46 min ago: | |
I would say "fairly annoying", alas! I never bothered to | |
make Selenium etc examples, though I know some customers | |
use it. You can switch to the SVG renderer for testing if | |
you really want to inspect the DOM after doing actions, and | |
some customers do this too. And you can mock events if you | |
want to, we give some basic examples: [1] But you have to | |
inspect programmatically one way or another. What is | |
easiest really depends on what, exactly, you want to test. | |
Eg testing your permissions (can a user copy a node with | |
these checkboxes in my app selected) can be done by trying | |
to copy and seeing how many Parts exist before and after, | |
etc. | |
[1]: https://gojs.net/latest/samples/Robot.html | |
neeleshs wrote 13 hours 14 min ago: | |
Thank you! | |
simonsarris wrote 22 hours 21 min ago: | |
Thank you. I guess I should update that, since GoJS renders to | |
SVG also if that's what you prefer (at a cost to performance of | |
course) | |
Most of us who make such libraries tend to distinguish charting | |
(time series, lines, bars) from graphing (nodes and links). | |
Charting is, in many aspects, a much smaller problem space. | |
Graphing requires a lot more in terms of layouts and interaction | |
tools, grid snapping, guides, undo/redo, copy/paste, grouping, | |
subgraphs, managing user permissions for interactivity, | |
expand/collapse (both subgraphs and tree sections), updating the | |
backing data when the graph is edited, etc. | |
alexcaza wrote 22 hours 50 min ago: | |
Nice write-up! This is a great example of throwing out "best practices" | |
and being truly user/product-centred. Even down to your trial strategy. | |
It reminds me of YNAB's trial[^1] strategy of offering 34 days. It | |
gives folks just enough time with their app and process. I wish YNAB's | |
trial extended to ~60 days since my "ah ha!" moment was only around | |
then. That's another conversation, though. | |
^1: | |
[1]: https://www.ynab.com/sign-up | |
Suppafly wrote 20 hours 21 min ago: | |
I imagine 34 days is so that you have enough to budget around an | |
entire month. Would be shitty to setup a budget and not be able to | |
follow it for a whole month. | |
alexcaza wrote 19 hours 50 min ago: | |
Yeah, exactly. Their whole thing is to get ~30 days ahead, too. I | |
think 60â90 days would be a better hook and almost guarantee an | |
"ah ha" moment. Everyone I've spoken to that's had YANB "click" was | |
in that time frame, myself included. | |
I wish I could see how a trial length change would affect their | |
conversions. | |
nick7376182 wrote 22 hours 53 min ago: | |
I wonder if for a larger consumer product this would not work, as word | |
gets around they can stay free for a long time. Though it seems to work | |
for a lot of community software like makeMKV. | |
PaulHoule wrote 22 hours 54 min ago: | |
As a software dev I can say this is so true. A 14-day free trial is | |
not free, it costs your time. | |
It takes a serious block of time to evaluate any product or service, | |
maybe a few days. If I put a few days into an open source product and | |
I like it I can just use it. If it is a paid product I'm going to have | |
to go to my management, it might be easy or it might be hard, but I | |
have to discount the gains from "I found a product I like" by the | |
probability that "we won't buy it anyway" so that makes me all the more | |
hesitant to complete a trial. | |
dredmorbius wrote 16 hours 4 min ago: | |
From the ops side my situation's similar. | |
The more so as the team is often small (one-person ops teams are | |
probably the norm, at least by number of establishments), and | |
workload is often already overwhelming. | |
New technology and/or products always come with unanticipated | |
consequences and downsides. Expecting to make a decision on a major, | |
or even minor tool isn't something that can be rushed. | |
One model I'd noted as innovative at the time was for a SAAS company | |
to offer a free tier of service, in the case in mind, with limited | |
data retention of a monitoring tool. That struck me as an | |
exceedingly good way to balance the power of the tool (all other | |
features were otherwise available), whilst also providing a clear and | |
reasonable upgrade path to a paid subscription. When that company | |
IPO'd and revealed its CoS (cost of sales), I was surprised to see | |
how high it remained (on the order of 40--50% of revenues). | |
Selling (and buying) complex information goods is hard, whether | |
that's software, services, consulting, news, or anything else. | |
There's a copious literature on the production side addressing the | |
zero marginal cost / high fixed costs predicament. There's less on | |
the buy side, though Akerlof's "Market for Lemons" addresses this in | |
part. Reducing uncertainty, increasing knowledge, and mitigating | |
purchaser risk without needlessly offsetting revenues seem key to the | |
issue. | |
dangus wrote 21 hours 45 min ago: | |
Implementers failing to prioritize doing some legwork during the free | |
trial period also costs time for the sales organization of the | |
selling party. | |
From the sales side, if we see the prospect the finding a solution is | |
a low enough priority that their engineers canât spend time in two | |
weeks to simply look at a solution, then they might not be an ideal | |
fit for the product (they donât enough business pain, donât have | |
a champion, and/or donât have an economic buyer to prioritize the | |
purchase of a solution). | |
This is of course highly dependent on the nature of the software and | |
the ideal customer profile of that solution, but the fact that | |
thereâs two sides of this coin is something to keep in mind. | |
barfbagginus wrote 19 hours 45 min ago: | |
In many orgs, pain points are subtle, product evaluations happen on | |
the back burner, and internal consensus on pulling the trigger | |
might take months. These firms are left on the table by a | |
demo/sales process that can only afford them two weeks. | |
And a trial need not take many sales resources. We can automate | |
that with a demo download and self serve documentation. If it's an | |
on prem demo, a 2 week or 12 week trial costs us the same - it's | |
just a sign up and download. We don't actually need a sales rep to | |
prod them about buying - the demo countdown does that, for people | |
actually gaining value from the demo. | |
Let's acknowledge the article's evidence that longer trials can | |
convert customers with lower pain points. Secure customers like to | |
evaluate things without pressure. And they might be the majority of | |
customers. | |
Let's enable this by building sales resilience, engineering the | |
infrastructure painlessly delivery a longer trial that takes near | |
zero sales or production effort. | |
gregmac wrote 22 hours 23 min ago: | |
And the time to evaluate for something you're releasing (vs staying | |
in your control on SaaS) is significantly higher. Things that lock | |
you in, especially between your released software and hosted services | |
-- like authentication, installers/auto-update, and licensing | |
(keygen) -- are even higher than that. | |
It's just really hard to "undo" these things, both technically and | |
because of the optics (user experience). Requiring your users to | |
re-license their software is friction -- it burns user trust and | |
costs a lot of time in support. | |
14 days is just too short to evaluate if the product will even meet | |
your needs, let alone evaluate how much lock-in there is and what the | |
path away could look like. | |
tomjen3 wrote 22 hours 25 min ago: | |
Sounds like you need a first filter, and then only do your evaluation | |
process on a given product if it solves a major pain point and even | |
in that case, just evaluate the best/most common product in that | |
category and only if it clearly doesn't work test another product. | |
You are not going to win as a startup by using Teams, even if it is | |
cheaper than Slack+Zoom, you are going to win big or not at all and | |
focusing on things that don't matter for the core success just means | |
less time to make something people want. | |
dylan604 wrote 22 hours 42 min ago: | |
In my experience, I've only looked at new software when the text on | |
the box says that it'll solve an issue we currently have, | |
dramatically improve existing workflows, or specifically asked by | |
someone else. If you're concerned about time, then maybe you (or your | |
company) are doing it wrong. Depending on the size of your company, | |
there should be a team of people assigned time to specifically | |
evaluate theNewShiny whatever. If the product does not do what is | |
advertised on the tin, then drop it and move on. If it does work as | |
advertised, the team then evaluates next steps in how to utilize it. | |
In this way, that research is already "budgeted" into employee's | |
time. | |
garciasn wrote 22 hours 48 min ago: | |
My team is responsible for the research, evaluation, approval, | |
integration, and on-going support for each and every single platform | |
that is within our stack. We have a lengthy standardized process for | |
evaluation/scoring/approval and one of our mandates is a minimum of | |
30 days, no payment, and no Sharewaresque limitation in | |
functionality. If we cannot get 30 days, it's a simple 'no,' and we | |
move on to the next. | |
Even at 30 days, it's extremely stressful on the team to get the | |
system up and running, ingest our test case data, and run our tests. | |
This is after going through this process >100 times. There's simply | |
no way to get everything that needs to be done with an evaluation of | |
even basic coverage in less than 30. Full stop. | |
Lack of adequate understanding of the potential challenges an org is | |
going to face during implementation and use is, IMO, the single | |
biggest reason implementations run WAY OVER budget, time, and | |
eventually fail at integration w/the rest of the org. This is | |
entirely ignoring the required change management, which is another | |
beast entirely. | |
ultrasaurus wrote 19 hours 53 min ago: | |
This sounds very much like an "enterprise" sale, with a sales rep | |
who can help with checklists and presumably extend your trial quite | |
a bit. | |
carlosjobim wrote 21 hours 51 min ago: | |
It sounds like you're bragging about a dysfunctional way of | |
working. If what your team is doing is valuable they should get any | |
tools they like without much questions. Just like in any reasonable | |
workplace. Because workers produce more and better when they have | |
better tools. | |
You can also just buy the software to evaluate it. This way you | |
have unlimited time to see if it fits or not. That's what people do | |
in other industries. | |
dh2022 wrote 21 hours 13 min ago: | |
Well, maybe a way to let workers try out better tools and not | |
explode the budget /complexity of the tech stack is to give devs | |
$500 / year to spend on whatever they want. It could be monitors, | |
a new IDE, etc.... This way individuals can try out a new tool | |
and if they really see itts value they could "sell" it to | |
management. | |
carlosjobim wrote 20 hours 22 min ago: | |
$500 per year is a pathetically low amount for a dev who is | |
expected to make his company hundreds of thousands or millions | |
per year. Plumbers and HVAC specialists have tools worth tens | |
of thousands of dollars. | |
robocat wrote 6 hours 34 min ago: | |
Comparing subscriptions to one-off costs makes little sense. | |
> Plumbers and HVAC specialists have tools worth tens of | |
thousands of dollars. | |
And how many of their tools are annual subscriptions? And do | |
their tools have residual value e.g. sell the business as a | |
whole? | |
carlosjobim wrote 1 hour 29 min ago: | |
Who said it was about subscriptions? | |
But physical tools wear out when used professionally, so | |
they are an ongoing cost. Not to mention all other material | |
that are simply spent when used by people in physical | |
businesses. | |
charlie0 wrote 10 hours 51 min ago: | |
We already have equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars. | |
It's between our ears. | |
carlosjobim wrote 1 hour 29 min ago: | |
Your glasses? | |
PaulHoule wrote 20 hours 56 min ago: | |
Even where there hasn't been a formal policy I usually haven't | |
had a hard time getting anything that costs, say, $50. | |
dijit wrote 21 hours 41 min ago: | |
Theres a quick fall-off. | |
Sourcegraph is $99/u/m and has major network effects. For a | |
moderately sized org this is quickly an entire developer salary. | |
Snyk is similarly priced, unfortunately âjust buyâ is a | |
really easy way to: | |
a) pay more than something is woth | |
b) have multiple products doing the same thing. (for example, I | |
have Miro and figjam and Mural in my company because each do | |
something slightly better and teams have chosen the tools that | |
work best). | |
That means we often double pay on licenses for ostensibly similar | |
software. | |
carlosjobim wrote 20 hours 17 min ago: | |
A) You don't need to buy the software for every employee at | |
once. Why not buy it for a dozen and try it? If it's good you | |
get more licenses. | |
B) You can buy software and evaluate and decide not to use it | |
and cancel the license. | |
sqs wrote 21 hours 30 min ago: | |
Sourcegraph CEO here. Itâs not $99/user/month anymore. Itâs | |
great that a lot of companies were willing to pay that, but we | |
and our customers prefer a lower per-user price and a higher % | |
of devs at the company using it (ideally 100%). We reduced | |
prices for our customers (current and future). You can see the | |
posted pricing at [1] . | |
For any other dev tools companies, Iâd strongly recommend | |
having lower prices so that every dev at your customer can use | |
it (if thatâs relevant for your product). If you start seeing | |
customers be really picky with who gets a license, itâs | |
probably priced too high. | |
[1]: https://sourcegraph.com/pricing | |
ftigis wrote 11 hours 59 min ago: | |
Why does it say 1 user limit for Pro plan and also that is | |
for small teams? Or am I missing misunderstand the pricing | |
page? | |
CamelCaseName wrote 19 hours 10 min ago: | |
Off-topic, but I see you always responding very quickly | |
whenever Sourcegraph is mentioned. | |
I was entertained a while back when I saw you getting accused | |
for using sockpuppets, but am I correct in thinking that | |
you're probably just using the API to monitor for name | |
mentions? | |
Edit: To be clear, I think this is great and that more | |
companies should do this. | |
sqs wrote 19 hours 2 min ago: | |
Haha, yeah, @jdorfman's sibling comment mentions the tools | |
we use. Any mentions on HN, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, etc., | |
show up in our team chat. The gold standard, of course, is | |
Sid at GitLab ("GitLab CEO here" :). | |
jdorfman wrote 19 hours 8 min ago: | |
Syften & Common Room =) | |
kfarr wrote 21 hours 45 min ago: | |
Yeah it is a bit odd to say that the #1 requirement is that the | |
software be free for 30 days, that would disqualify a bunch of | |
critical infrastructure. | |
p_l wrote 20 hours 59 min ago: | |
A lot of multiple thousand dollars per seat software will offer | |
evaluation licenses, for various lengths of time, sometimes way | |
longer than 30 days. | |
arnon wrote 22 hours 56 min ago: | |
I made a beeline to the median, because funnily enough my median for | |
other B2B SaaS was also 41. | |
I feel vindicated! | |
For consumer stuff my experience was closer to 25, but for businesses | |
it was 41. | |
seurimas wrote 22 hours 45 min ago: | |
Interesting! 25 business days for a business is close to 41 calendar | |
days, too. I wonder if there's some sort of common, human constant | |
involved. 25 days of engaging with something to decide whether that | |
something is worth keeping around. Maybe the median relationship | |
length is 25 days, too... | |
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