Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers

Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by rosywoozlechan on Saturday January 09, 2021 @04:33AM (#25698923)

You may not want to offer a free version. Freeloaders don't convert and they become a support burden whether or not you offer support to them. Once you want to shut off the free version, which you will, you're going to make those people who used your thing and didn't value it enough to pay you for it mad. They wont convert, they'll just get toxic, because they'll feel entitled to your free service. A free option isn't worth it.

You made a cool thing. Charge for it.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by kimsant on Saturday January 09, 2021 @04:46AM (#25698991)

Free users help making a robust product avoiding having tones of bugs/lacks discovered by paid users. Running an ecommerce warehouse integration platform, is not easy to come forward with all business cases / use cases beforehand. Just look below, a dude says it lacks timezone support. Valuable information. Value provided!

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by skrebbel on Saturday January 09, 2021 @06:18AM (#25699457)

I agree with this advice for SaaS in general, but there are exceptions. Eg Typeform and Calendly and Dropbox all grew virally through their free tier. Given that this product is a bit similar to Calendly, perhaps a similar effect can be achieved.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by mikaelcarlavan on Saturday January 09, 2021 @05:30AM (#25699216)

Thank you for your comment. Defining the price and associated features was really not easy for me; I hesitated for a long time but you gave me some very good leads!

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by dexterdog on Saturday January 09, 2021 @02:16PM (#25703550)

The problem is $9/mo is way too much for something like this unless you are using it heavily.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by rosywoozlechan on Sunday January 10, 2021 @03:39AM (#25712391)

^^ This the kind of user you don't want. Someone who uses your service but thinks you're charging too much. You have to ignore customers like this who demand that you charge something that won't feed your employees, because there will be enough customers that will pay what you want, or you just don't have product market fit.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by dexterdog on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @03:07PM (#25767286)

And with that logic you will be stuck at a small size because if you ever want to go after a larger audience you will have to cut prices to your existing customers which will be hard after you get fat and happy by over-charging.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by atian on Saturday January 09, 2021 @04:37AM (#25698945)

Any publicity is good publicity. If people don’t want to pay they won’t pay, and that’s a deeper problem for your product.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by rosywoozlechan on Saturday January 09, 2021 @04:38AM (#25698949)

Are you speaking from experience? Free users don't provide publicity, and them not converting isn't a problem with the service. You told them exactly how you valued your service and that's what they expect to pay for it. Nothing.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by atian on Saturday January 09, 2021 @04:40AM (#25698962)

This is in response to toxic users. But supporting freeloaders costs money.

I’m saying weigh your conversions. Your comment suggests to discount freeloaders entirely.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by rosywoozlechan on Saturday January 09, 2021 @04:42AM (#25698975)

They're going to be toxic to you, in emails and on your support chat or @'ing you. They're going to drain your energy and make you upset. Nothing good will come from it.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by capableweb on Saturday January 09, 2021 @06:19AM (#25699466)

Basically any popular SaaS in the wild today would disagree with your "Nothing good will come from it" comment as 99% of them offer some sort of free plan.

It's really hard to start a service from 0 and get users to join the platform when it's new. Imagine then that there is no way for users to try out the platform before subscribing to it, uptake will be even lower.

You don't have to reply to every chat and communication channel, especially if it's clear that you've already tried to help the user and it's not enough for them. Ignoring is a powerful tool many forget.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by llaolleh on Saturday January 09, 2021 @08:05AM (#25700044)

I may be naive in this, but aren't most people not assholes? Including free users. I would guess that most free users are nice enough and would appreciate the work you do. Also, making a product free is nice because if it is really cool, users will advertise for you. If I love a product I will share it. Simple.

Maybe OP is jaded because a couple of bad free users trashed his work.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by rosywoozlechan on Sunday January 10, 2021 @03:35AM (#25712367)

Freeloaders are not worth it, based on my now over 10 years of experience in this space.

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Re:Show HN: Convier.me – A Calendar Service for Developers by capableweb on Sunday January 10, 2021 @06:43AM (#25713729)

I hear you, we have different experiences for sure, which is why the issue is not black or white. I also have around 10 years of experience and would guess neither of my projects nor the projects I work on would be successful unless we had a free tier.

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