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Ask HN: Keep the product free during the beta?

6 points by dawson ↗ HN
I understand the rational of validating our business model and customers' willingness to pay for the product, however, I'm still leaning towards a free beta (while being clear about the cost of product post beta). I'm wondering what the consensus is on HN?

7 comments

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cupofjoakim
It should be free. A beta is a beta - it's not finished. The reasons for your beta period is for YOUR sake. You are the one who wants to test your product, give it some marketing and get feedback before launching a final version. The users in that case are helping you achieve your goal - which means that they should get to try out that service for free.
NicoJuicy
Ask a lower price, at least you get feedback from people who care instead of people who want to add features all the time, you could give them a free trial for a month though.

(PS. Freemium users are more difficult then premium users in most cases, they want a lot for nothing :))

onion2k
You'd be amazed at how terrible something can be and yet still provide enough value to the user to make them feel it's worth paying for. Based on that I'd say charge as early as you possibly can - as soon as users are getting value.
glimcat
If they're not willing to pay, you have users not customers.

Are you building this for users or customers? If customers, why would you want to test and develop it against people who aren't your customer?

rubinelli
Free and paid products frequently attract completely different audiences. If you go with a free beta, you may end up with the wrong product.
akg_67
Another option is to consider donation during beta phase. Ask users to pay whatever they want (don't mention minimum and maximum). This will provide you some idea about price customers willing to pay and what type of customers value your product.

I recently implemented this strategy for my web service. Only about 1% of registered users and 30% of active users donated but the average donor contribution was three times of what I was estimating the price of the service.

It also helped me prioritize which user requests should bubble up quickly. My plan is now to introduce donor exclusive features. Then I want to track changes in number of donors and contribution.

patrikj
A beta version probably should be free due to it being a non-finished product.

On my current project (https://report4me.com) we're trying the free beta model not only to get beta testers but also to determine a price point.

We give away the product to beta users for the foreseeable future, with the intent to ask them outright what they feel the product would be worth. The idea is that since they can feel comfortable that they won't actually have to pay the price they mention they might actually be more honest about it.