Ask HN: How do a SaaS compete when others offer a free plan

2 points by kureikain 5y ago ↗ HN

I'm running a SaaS and I don't offer free plan. We do have free trial and one click cancel and no question asked refund. I proactly reached out to our customers to asked if they need more time to evaluate.

But it always feel like a losing game where others just offer free plan. I don't even know how they can afford to offer free plans. I feel like I built something and poor hours of work into it, I reached to people manually, listen for feedback and try to implement/fix thing as fast as possible, then I should charge for it.

Then I looked back, cloudflare offers free DNS management, while dnsimple is $6/per month. And dnsimple is doing very well obviously, they have been around for 10 years.

Or fastmail vs gmail, gmail is free and fastmail charge $3 per month.

So, SaaS founders, do you offer free plan for your SaaS and how do you compete with others that has a free plan?

1 comment

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mindhash 5y ago ↗

Imp thing is to realize nothing is free. If someone is offering free plan, its mostly because they are monetizing on features or other products. So compete with the paid features of product instead of worrying about free plan.

Gmail has a free plan but there are superhuman and hey. Both competing in paid email space.

Don't worry too much about free plan, add features that users will pay for.