

What happened when our OSS project stayed on the front page of HN for 24 hours - bevenky
https://plivo.com/blog/what-happened-when-our-oss-project-stayed-on-the-front-page-of-hacker-news-for-24hrs/

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notastartup
I have some burning questions about this.

Did the quality of leads improve due to the open source version?

Does the open source version create urgency/needs payoff?

Can you say that the open source version of your product acted as a marketing
channel? ex. get users to eventually paying for your paid or pro version?

Do you think the open source version will end up cannibalizing your own paid
product?

Where are you hosting your pages and web api?

If you would do it again, what would you do differently?

~~~
superlucy
@notastartup,

Answers in line:

>Did the quality of leads improve due to the open source version?

We are speculating that our quality of leads improved because the conversion
to paying customers increased. However, we are still watching our cohorts
carefully to make sure that all the users get a good experience and continue
to use Plivo.

>Does the open source version create urgency/needs payoff?

We definitely think that this has paid off. It's really increased our
mindshare in the open source community and the connection to users have been
very positive.

>Can you say that the open source version of your product acted as a marketing
channel? ex. get users to eventually paying for your paid or pro version?

The short answer is yes. Although, VoiceChatAPI is only one of many things you
can build with Plivo, it has definitely shown a lot of people the
possibilities and that has got people interested in using us for other things.

>Do you think the open source version will end up cannibalizing your own paid
product?

No. The open source version is an unique offering and there will always be
businesses who would want to pay more for a more full-featured service. Users
who want to host themselves, should have access and those who want more have
the option as well.

>Where are you hosting your pages and web api?

It's on Heroku.

>If you would do it again, what would you do differently?

We would've done this much earlier.

~~~
notastartup
Thank you very much for the answers.

What can I do to get similar level of traffic to my open source project?

