

Ask HN: Tricks for choosing which features to charge for? - mcav

In a freemium app, do you have any tricks to help you decide which features to include in the paid tier vs. the free tier?<p>Sometimes there aren't easy distinctions like storage limits, number of "projects" allowed, etc. Given a bucket of arbitrary features, how would you choose which to include in the premium tier?<p>Obviously, it's easier to "free" a feature than to start charging once it has already been free.
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angelbob
An old trick from shareware folks: pick features they won't want to use
immediately, like going beyond a certain size/number of projects. That way
you're only targeting people who already know your service is valuable to them
(or isn't).

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barmstrong
I struggled with this question as well in the past on UniversityTutor.com.
Here are a few common ones from other sites that I looked at. Maybe the right
one will jump out.

number of photos, highlighted listing (AutoTrader)

storage space (Evernote)

top listing in search results (Google)

top listing in search results, larger listing/photo, more photos
(Haystack.com)

number of projects, ssl, storage (Basecamp)

number of faxes sent (FaxZero.com)

number of subscribers (Aweber.com)

Pro Badge, storage, num photos (Flickr)

receive messages but can't reply (Match.com)

send messages to full inboxes, racy photos, other stuff (OkCupid)

If you don't mind sharing the app we could probably come up with some other
ideas too. If you literally just have a laundry list of features, then yeah
maybe the best and most useful ones you give away free, and the ones power
users will want you can make paid. That is the heart of the freemium model I
think: a _causal_ user who might find it useful once a month should be able to
use it free, and spread the word for you. A _power_ user who is logging in
almost daily, or making money from it (for business), etc should be a paid
user.

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makecheck
As a consumer, I like being able to at least try _any_ feature, no matter what
tier it's on. Just make it clear when something is a trial, as opposed to
permanently free.

There's nothing worse than having to pay $10 more per month, or whatever, only
to find out that something isn't worth it.

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barmstrong
Not sure if this is what you meant, but an old fashioned free trial based on
time (30 day free trial!) doesn't convert as well as a freemium based trial
(first 100 subscribers free, after that $10/month) in my experience.

The latter is a good way to let people try it while avoiding the ticking
clock. I think the 30 (and 60) day free trials rub people the wrong way since
so many were used for borderline scams over the years, hoping people would
forget to cancel in time, etc.

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csomar
People will pay for feature $x a month, if that features helps them boost
their earnings $2x; think of that: which features can make your client richer?
How much? and charge!

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wlievens
You're discarding entertainment features, which is nontrivial when it comes to
the webapp space.

