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Why free products aren't cool anymore
I have made many free products in my dev career, and all of them have failed.
I have decided to start this little discussion where I'll outline some of my issues with free products/apps/services. I'd really like to hear an argument in the opposite direction and what we can do to have successful "Free" launches.
My issues with "Free":
- Ads. : "Free with ads" is so often poorly implemented that it generally ruins the user experience.
- "Free" customers aren't very nice: Contrary to what you might believe, the most demanding and critical (borderline rude) emails I have received are from users that didn't have to pay for my products.
- Free products aren't valued (not to be confused with 'valuable'): This one runs a bit deep into human psychology so I won't even try explaining it, but think of all the free high-quality t-shirts that you've never worn.
- "Am I the price?": You can probably find your personal information on servers in countries you'll never visit. So if it's free AND good, there is an uneasy feeling that your data is up for grabs.
- Honourable mentions: "Free doesn't pay bills", "How long will the developer support this for free", and "When will I be forced to upgrade to a paid plan and lose all my data"
Feel free (*wink*) to tell me what you've experienced, or done to get past these objections.
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Alexis Collado
All interesting points. I think it's all about getting value right away, or making "time to value" the shortest possible path. I like @neilroy91's answer below too. If you're making a "free" product, it's definitely going to be a lead magnet as part of your acquisition/interest phase of your funnel. The value for your company there is having a captive interested audience.
Execution is also top of mind for me. If the "free" product is useless, no one will really want it. So you'd want to double check if what you're putting out there as a lead magnet really solves a problem.
Most companies that are "product led" offer freemium services so you can experience the value first. That's "free" too! But it's part of a flywheel that gets users to convert over time.
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Agree around the implications of free products. But I think the expectations need to be set properly for such free products. I have 2 use-cases here, my company focuses on eCommerce growth:
1) Give a free product, where in you can extract data/usage based patterns from end users, while it being a lead gen tool as well. This gives you a funnel to start emailing them from user interviews/product feedbacks to actually making a case for your product - for the %age of users who convert, that's your free product conversion rate to an MQL.
Case in point: ecommerceprompts.com - we created this 3 months back, got 4K+ leads in the pipeline, but more importantly 15K+ user generated prompts that helped us understand what exactly users are looking for.
2) Give a free product, that's an extension of your main product, I think a popular term for them is a gateway drug. You create a user journey, where users see immediate value of the product, and there's a motivation to do more - and before they even realise it - they are already trying out the main product. I call them hyperloops straight inside the product, without having to go through the signup frictions.
Case in point: https://www.getmoda.io/templates - our templates library. We've currently set it up for users to download these templates - but we plan to create a signup funnel - so that if users want to update/modify such templates, they can inside our app!
@neilroy91 interesting insights into your business and great ways to obtain new customers. Have you made anything recently without the intent to sell?
I have a very simple view of what free means. For the owner, it's a replacement of Customer Acquisition Cost. For the User, it's an attention grab and a good reason to start using the product.
Then it's all about how to use that marketing tool (freemium, free trial etc..)
@julien_fayad that's an interesting perspective, and I mostly agree, but isn't there still a cost incurred to acquire free customers?
@izakotim indeed, the cost to acquire a customer through a free funnel is not 0. The question is how much time and money are you saving by making pass through this funnel vs a funnel that requires scheduling a demo, selling the price and getting all decision makers on board to use your solution ?
That's a very generic question but the answer is specific to each product.
I personally believe that providing value first to build trust is a very "human centric" way of doing business
@dextersjab thanks for your endorsement kind sir, haha. I'm trying to get in the habit of writing down ideas in my head, even if they are poorly written. I'm informed it's the only way to get better.
I am so glad I found this post. After all, I wanted to write something very similar for discussion.
I am currently working on a project, the essence of which is to create and host free services and products on an online platform. You can call it a marketplace of free offers and requests.
I have worked in the field of marketing and advertising for many years and I often come across additional free services in businesses that create advertising campaigns. I can even provide a long list of such suggestions. Therefore, I understand that it is really possible to provide something for free while receiving benefit in the long run.
Also, I think this platform will be useful for socially responsible businesses and volunteers.
What do you think about such an online service?
@oleg_grygola I am completely in support of such a marketplace! I'd also encourage you to go ahead and write up your discussion as well, this is a conversation that I feel we do not have nearly enough creators taking part in.
What do you hope to achieve in the long run with your marketplace?
@izakotim thank you!
I have several goals:
- real help to people who need it on a permanent basis due to popularization of the project
- involvement of many volunteers, businesses and specialists who can be involved in creating free offers and responding to public requests
- project monetization. It will allow weeding out freebies and creating limited access, which will also have a positive effect on the future of the project
This is a great perspective.
My take:
1. free is good if you have a powerful upsell. I do like to “try before I buy” sometimes. Free trial is good for me tbf.
2. free is also good if you want to own mass attention, or a massive slice of the market and crush competition. I think people sometimes give away value for free, without being 100% about what they’re getting in return, and that’s a mistake.
@henwalkco very true, "free" tends to be a means to an end. Slightly worrying that people rarely make things because they need to exist or at least because they are simply "cool"
I agree there needs to be some kind revenue model and people expect the free trial or freemium model these days. But do you try to get users on a subscription or just pay once to download?
@mattbucklin just free, no upsells, no hidden costs, no ads. Seems like "free" has become pretty suspicious haha
As a marketer who has built a free product from scratch to 100K+ users along with a small team, I can totally get this. 🥺
@senthil99nathan sounds like you've been through the trenches... why did you decide to offer your product for free?
@izakotim , we were building a community-based social network where people can join their fav communities based on their interests and network with like-minds. I guess you should get the answer now. :)