Why we dropped our free plan

1. Have free plan to pick up 10x more users (and gain more traction, exposure, feedback, etc).

2. When the time is right, remove free plan to convert some of those users.

The rest is just b.s. to justify a perfectly good strategy to those free users and the rest of the market. Which is b.s. in itself (...thinking you have to justify it with b.s.).

But it was so well done here that you kind of have to admire it.

Gaining H.N. exposure for a day, and getting picked up on some other sites is also not too bad.

At Huddle we faced this issue a few years ago and ended up dropping our free package. Especially for businesses, there's often just no point in trying to support free users. In the long run, everybody has done better for it.

There is one type of user you might not have considered yet, though: Charities.

We started the Huddle Foundation [0], which provides free accounts to Non-Profits, for up to 25 users. They get all the standard features that Huddle provides (in other words, everything except advanced customisation which is really just visual stuff). We do it through a company called TechSoup.

I recommend you look into something like this, because most charities really don't need to be spending money on stuff like this. It's better and more useful for them if they stick with one platform instead of hopping from one to the other to the other as free trials run out. You'd probably be a hero in many charity recruiters' eyes :)

[0]: http://www.huddle.com/foundation/ [1]: http://www.techsoup.org/

Edit: Since what I said appears to be a bit controversial, maybe I need to clarify a bit. Free plans are great for getting users initially and to test a product, but there are serious tradeoffs to consider if you're looking to get revenue. Not every business is built on top of the idea of accumulating users ---> raise VC ----> exit.

For most people who want to build a business with even just modest revenues and stay bootstrapped, paying users really are your best bet, since it proves value in what you're doing. People only have finite resources, so it might as well be spent on people who value your services enough to pay for them.

This quote from the post serves as a great TL;DR

Thoughts about that strategy?

  It forces an honest decision. Will I really get value out of this product,
   enough to justify paying for it? If someone is not getting $19 worth of value out of Workable,
  then we’re not solving a real problem they have.

2. Cut free service, converting some users

3. Make a condescending blog post and fire it at HN for publicity.

* Everyone starts with 5 free transactions and test transactions do not count.

* If they were referred to me, they get an additional 5 transactions for free.

* After they use up those 10 total initial transactions and pay for credits, the original referrer gets 5 transactions for free, once, and 20% of what the person they referred paid me. This referral arrangement continues for a long time.

* I integrate the product into every customer's website for free to eliminate the friction of them not knowing how to do it. It's much easier to do a quick remote login than to educate customers how to do it.

* You can sign up to use my product by SMS. No credit cards required.

* I don't prevent a customer from using the product when they have zero credits. They simply don't get the product until they pay. However, I never change the end user experience.

* I don't charge a monthly fee and I don't charge for maintaining a mobile landing page, for which competitors charge.

For many customers, that initial 10 free transactions is all they will ever need. My technology quietly sits on their website and credits them for their passive referrals for clicks on my widget.

Due to the nature of my product, charging a monthly fee does not make much sense. The usage spikes and is difficult to predict. It made more sense to charge per transaction.

I am not sure I agree with the statement that you will not find evangelists among your free users. I don't pay for Apigee, Appery, Salesforce or BizSpark. I pay a modest amount to Twilio. I will talk your ear off about how great these and many other companies are.

Have you not deployed it or just reverted?

You still have to support non-paying trial users, you still need to think about features which go on paid vs. trial plans. Then the only difference becomes the volume of users? Or do you think people have fundamentally different expectations from a trial than from a freemium product?

* users can make sure they like the service before paying for it. This avoids costly refunds

* users can integrate our API and doing tests without having to pay for it. It makes for a better experience, as they don't feel they are paying for missing documentation or limited libraries.

If you make the free plan useful as a trial, this can be a win-win. With my service, I see people using the free plan as a trial only: after a few days they pay for it, or they stop using the service.

I also use my free users for posting Tweets and other social sharing.