Good points, but the reason behind having a free tier is not to offer a good experience for free, but to eliminate the initial friction of using a payment mechanism so that a user can actually try a product before committing to it.
A workaround is to offer a refund if the user is not satisfied. I wonder how many sign ups would be lost to people who purely just do not want to enter payment info (vs users who don't want to commit).
Not having a free plan does not mean you cannot have a free trial which does not require entering payment info!
actually they have a free trial, but I think they should edit the main page according to it:
there's a "create a free account" call to action button in the main page, but actually it will lead you to a 15 days trial (as stated in the Pricing page). Maybe they can use a more clear statement also in the home page, instead of "no credit card required" use "no credit card required - 15 days free trial".
If I'm evaluating something for a business, I find limited free plans very very useful. Money back? much less so. Personally, I think a time-limited scheme or a limited functionality scheme is the best compromise.
Agree. But the best way to do this is to give a free trial period. We were hoping that giving a light version of the product free (not just for 15 days) would have a similar or better effect. It didn't work, and this post was written to describe why (at least in our opinion and for our case).