Do they ever make sense?
I’m not saying that it’s impossible to be successful if you launch with a free plan.
Obviously free plans have worked well for companies like Wufoo, MailChimp, and FreshBooks, so we know they can work. But the problem is that we’re not them.
We need to stop blindly copying them and start thinking about ways to bring in revenue.
I’ll concede that there are certain types of apps that are more likely to succeed by offering a free plan and going with the Freemium model. But the vast majority of apps aren’t in this category, and the vast majority of people don’t have the resources to make that model work.
Taking advantage of word-of-mouth marketing requires more users than most of us will attain. Instead, we end up with a large number of free users zapping away valuable resources for nothing in return. To top it off, most free users will never end up converting to a paid plan.
If we have thousands of users that don’t increase awareness and will never pay for our product, why do we insist in offering something that’s going to hurt our business? Maybe we should just skip that free plan and focus on making money instead.
