Post LTD - Freemium?

Help & Support
#1

After LTD ends, will there be a free version of infinity offered?

Something with long term usability functionality that allows new customers, to test, play, learn and experiment with most of the functionality infinity has to offer, and if they start to do serious work and upload serious amounts of data then they hit a paywall. Upgrading to a paid plan unlocks greater limits.

One of the biggest reasons i got into airtable was because i could build everything i need and it is functionally usable. I became a master on the free version, and now with this confidence i could upgrade at any time.

I am hoping Infinity will have a free plan as i am hoping to share the templates i create as part of an online course and attract these customers to use Infinity via training on how to use the templates.

What i don’t want is to have to upsell them a second time to buy Infinity (after i just sold them onto my course).

Hope this makes sense

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Summary of Most Requested Features! (regularly updated, Infiniteers Please Add More!)
#2

Hey @CodeKnight,

I’m not really sure if that’s going to be the case, and neither do decision-makers for now, I believe. We have a slight draft of the future pricing, but nothing final.

I personally support that direction, and will definitely share your thoughts with the team.

Thank you :slight_smile:

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#3

I hold my breath in anticipation for what the future holds!

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#4

In my personal opinion simple free + per seat pricing is not going to address different customers needs. I don’t knowhow it can be done for a tool like Infinity but the best idea for pricing is to first decide on buying personas (customer segments) and then offer pricing tailored for each group. In case of freelancers freemium model is a very good idea IMHO.

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#5

I personally have a problem with the airtable pricing.

Basically i am on the free version, and have highly shared my bases and collaborate with many people as users in my bases

If i was to upgrade to premium, i would have to pay for all these people i am currently collaborating with. It would cost me $240 * 10, per year to go to premium…

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#6

There have been MANY discussions (or mentions) about this:
*Infinity Future Pricing Model
*Invite User by Link
*Notion.so comparisons/brainstorming
*Invite User by Link

I started thinking about this last week again. I think a free user who has access to 1 board, 1 view, 50 MB of storage, and all other functionality would be good. It allows the full experience of features with good incentive to upgrade.

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#7

Time for a rant! :slight_smile:

To grow Infinity “to Infinity” you need this to spread like a virus!

For virality, every customer who uses the product needs the following:

  1. Quality of Experience: A fantastic experience, no barriers to using the platform to its full potential, ease of use, self explanatory as much as possible, great on demand support, enough features to experience the breadth of what is possible, enough time to get comfortable and confident with the tool.
  2. Compelling Reason to Share: They “HAVE” to share it because what they have created is awesome and the world must know about it.Their friends will benefit from using it, and their experience is greatly improved through their friends engagement, not to mention referral incentives. Viral means each customer shares the products and is in turn picked up by more than 1 other person. This is exponential. I.e Every customer across your user base (On average) manages to convince 1.1 new customers to sign up. This is the reason it needs to be super easy for your customers to share infinity with others.

A pay wall (Buying premium) is an obstacle and barrier. To overcome a barrier, the new user has to have sufficient momentum (achieved by giving them as many reasons as possible to buy and removing as many reasons as possible as to why they shouldn’t buy).

A super resticted free version is not freemium. This is trash :slight_smile: You get a poor concept of the softwares capabilites and are still unsure if it will serve your purposes.

Where as a Trial is like hitting a brick wall after 14 steps… And hoping they get through. Most won’t as they lack the organisational proficiency to have their team fully test everything in the time period and will have too many concerns and reservations to make the commitment. Worst of all with a trial, once the trial has ended you have lost them as a customer, you lose the opportunity to further develop them as a prospect and get them over the line.

Freemium is an exponential power curve that gently takes you from 0 to Hero. It gives you everything you need to get through the paywall.

https://media1.giphy.com/media/xUOwGfcrlRjKjs2sSI/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e47eb5184f001674af819b3f058d139c338aee6ce3a&rid=giphy.gif(image larger than 4096KB)

Freemium is a must, i don’t waste time with tools that don’t have a useful free version. If i am going to invest my time into learning your tool, then i must have a tangible benefit regardless of whether or not i decide to go premium. That’s my thought process.

Freemium is like a sales funnel, the more your free users use the product, the more they understand it, the more they like it, the more committed they are to the product, the more experience they have, the closer they are to maxing out their limits and making the move to premium.

Premium upgrade is a no brainier decision when: You are a master of the product, confident you can achieve the result you are looking for, have developed and built a library of essential data to both your personal and professional life, and have committed countless hours of you precious life to make this all happen. To move to another product will cause you more pain than the upgrade.

Not to mention the other non monetary value that freemium brings to the business. Referrals, additional voices in the community, more people willing to support and help each other, a greater pool of hot leads (Freemium users vs Never Used), free on-boarding support with existing customers assisting in the training and question answering of their friends and colleagues they have referred into the program…

If i had two similar products and one had freemium and the other had an expiring trial period i would always go the freemium route. Why? I want depth and understanding, not a glorified taste of what you have dubbed “Infinity”.

Rant over :stuck_out_tongue:

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Infinity Future Pricing Model
#8

If I hadn’t found Infinity during the beta, I wouldn’t have joined. I was already on Clickup, and Trello, and Airtable, and a host of other systems, trying to find a good match for what I needed in a software management system. Because I had full access to Infinity’s functionality, I dared to invest weeks of time into my current suite of projects (including details of 450+ companies we are working with).

I now think Infinity’s structure is fantastic, and am happy to be a member of the LTD club. However, I wouldn’t have dipped my toes in if I didn’t have an opportunity to try it out without strict limitations or a trial period that would have cut me off from my information.

Trello and Clickup are so big because of their freemium. I didn’t stay with them because Trello is too basic, Clickup is just slightly too restricted on the freemium, and Infinity was so much better. I’m glad I was able to have access to experience its features, so I could decide on making the plunge.

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#9

If I could, I’d put a 100 likes on your post @CodeKnight :slight_smile: Thank you for the rant, I agree with most of the points. Though putting limitations on the free plan and giving a free trial can be troublesome, they also have some positive sides (such as giving ‘authority’, and ‘hooking’ people to explore the platform by investing resources in it). Of course, it really depends on the way a specific direction we decide on following through is built.

Of course, it’s also a question of finances and budget.

Like @BaiJie mentioned, both Clickup and Trello are a good example of a freemium model. But their business methodology and running are different from ours.

We don’t have any investors. but are rather bootstrapping Infinity, which makes a huge impact on this decision.

Another example: When we increased Free Trial from 14 days to 30-days back in October (I think), we achieved significantly better results in our KPIs and overall metrics.

And there’s always a question: ‘For how long should we run this (direction)?’

Yes, Freemium could cause a Covid-19 like growth, but could also cause a lower revenue (and profits).

We’re already doing our best to think this through as much as possible, analyze all factors, make some projections and research, research, research!

Your ‘rant’ (I’d rather call it a super powerful thought) is super helpful, and I’ve shared the whole message with the team.

__

@BaiJie thanks so much for joining this conversation, as well. I really appreciate your insight, and I agree on that point: Early members/core community has been super supportive since the very beginning, and always saw a bright future for Infinity. Thanks for following us from the very beginning, and we’d always like to share thinking like this in the future, and listen to your advice and feedback :slight_smile:

Cheers, guys! You really are the best. :heart:

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#10

I want to submit an intensely heavy +1 to @CodeKnight’s “rant” (thoughts). He makes an extremely clear and compelling case.

I also want to thank him for sharing it because I found it quite educational!

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#11

@man @coa @chrish @BaiJie

In marketing the goal is to convert the money you spend on it into greater monetary value (Paying Customers).

Freemium is a form of marketing.

I think a strategy like that employed by dropbox could work well for infinity. You could have a freemium version which has greater unlock-able limits when the user performs certain actions. The goal is to “Pay” and “Reward” your freemium customers (extended marketing team) when they perform actions that “Return Greater Value” to infinity.

For example:
Initial Freemium:

  1. One Workspace
  2. 2 Boards
  3. 2 GB
  4. Unlimited Collaborators (You want your freemium members to share and spread the message easily, this is achieved largely through inviting friends and co-workers to use the resources you have created)

For every successful referral:
+1 GB

For every 5 successful referrals:
+1 Board

For every 10 successful referrals:
+1 Workspace

For sharing an infinity post on their facebook news feed:
+500 MB

For following Infinity on FB, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc:
+500 MB Each

For leaving a review / video testimonial:
+1 GB

For every liked post in the infinity forum:
+10 MB

Think of all the things that you want your customers to do and then incentivise it through improved limits. The best part is they may not even use up the additional limits given to them.

The above strategy is for RAPID growth in your user base and will cost you money through server hosting fees, etc

What you now have is a large (rapidly growing) audience of hot leads, which a percentage could be easily promoted to and converted to a paying customer if given the right incentive.

I.e.
A loyalty discount: for continued use of the platform for a period of time.
A birthday discount: Reduced price for a limited time on their birthday
Special Limited Time Sales: When you need a funding boost, run a sale.

The discount would only be for the first month, 6 months, year. With normal pricing after that. These subscriptions would be similar to gym memberships (if they arent really committed,) they would sign up and forget about it.

Hopefully infinity would prompt them to take action and have a great experience with their product…

Imagine a freemium that starts as a good test bed, that then (through the freemium members diligence and hard work promoting and “working” for Infinity) over time unlocks into version with limits equivalent to the Enterprise Lifetime Deal!!!

Super

Absolutely doable and possible if the user contributes value to Infinity equal to or greater than the cost of infinity giving them such expanded limits.

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Infinity Future Pricing Model
#12

Another great example is Robinhood. They give you a free stock for joining, and if you are referred by a friend, you both get a free stock. My buddy got Microsoft as his first stock, which is absolutely an investment up front, but his whole family and 5-6 of his friends joined within a week (with stocks valued from $2-10 each). They now exclusively use Robinhood for any stock trading, instead of a more traditional system.

Getting people excited about software isn’t easy. The App Stores on Apple and Android have desensitized the masses, because there is so much that can be downloaded for free. However, there are games that some spend hundreds on, because it was at first a free download with available upgrades.

I think the key is here:

I also have all kinds of respect for this notion:

What if you went the way of GMail (arguably the best SaaS ever), and introduced freemium By Invitation Only?

Having an overload of new users can become unwieldy quickly in terms of server/hosting capacity, but you could make a big marketing announcement, and have a signup for freemium, where you can add users at your own pace? And then, allow current users to recommend friends/family. Those recommended get put at the top of the list.

Add incentives for recommendations on top of that (incentives are only received when a recommendation turns into a paid user) and you’ve got a self-running marketing campaign.

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#13

One more small thought… Beta version access? Having an elite set of testers could be helpful for new feature rollouts, and pushes bugs out of the system faster than only having an internal testing team. This could also be incentivized somehow I think…

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#14

A very good idea, indeed! I second to that :slight_smile:

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