

Ask HN: Competing with Free - pedalpete

I've spent the last few months building a web-app which is currently in closed beta.<p>Today I found out that a few months ago a competitor lauched who is offering their product for free.<p>I've taken a look at their offering, and I'm fairly confident that my product is better, but I'm wondering if anybody has any advice on competing with a free product.<p>Or if you can point me to examples of other paid products which are winning out over free competitors, I'd really appreciate it.<p>I'm not giving up, as I mentioned, I believe I have a better product, but I may need to tweak my messaging/marketing/other to answer this new market challenge.
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pwim
Project management is one example. There are tons of free and paid options for
both.

Also, as a paid product, you don't need to focus on _winning out over free
competitors_ , but instead making enough money for yourself. As long as your
product is economically successful, it doesn't matter if a free product has
more users or whatever you define as winning criteria.

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sojourner
Word v Open Office.

I think it's been 2 or 3 times that I didn't have Word installed. And it's
been the same dance each time: Look up prices for Word. Run to download Open
Office. Spend about an hour doing something that would take 15 minutes in
Word, despite the fact that each has the same menu and supposedly most of the
same features. Go back to looking up prices on Word. Spend about an hour and a
half playing other open-source word processors. Going back to looking up
prices on Word. Getting Word and uninstalling Open Office and all the other
useless time leeches I've downloaded, thinking that I'll never, ever do that
to myself again.

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brandonkm
I think pinboard is a great example of competing with a free product
(delicious). Pinboard has focused exclusively on a core set of features, with
a particular focus on being the minimal bookmarking web app. This page they
created does a good job of comparing them to their competition
<http://pinboard.in/switch/> .

I mention all of this to say that I would focus on what _exactly_ makes your
app better. The goal may not be to win against the free app, but to make the
best app you can while focusing on the paying users.

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jwegan
One example is online dating which is a very competitive market. The free
product (such as OkCupid or PlentyOfFish) are arguably better than the paid
product but a large segment still uses the paid product. eHarmony markets
itself as being a site for people serious about marriage. True markets itself
as the only dating site with background checks.

The key obviously is making users aware of why your product is superior and
convincing them it is worth the cost.

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pedalpete
Very interesting that you coin the free products as 'arguably better' than the
paid.

You'd think it would be the other way around, with the paid being arguably
better.

So, how do you make it obvious why one product is superior to another and
worth the cost?

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jwegan
The reason I said free is better is due to this blog post from OkCupid
[http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/04/07/why-you-
should-...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/04/07/why-you-should-never-
pay-for-online-dating/) in which they say a lot of the profiles in pay sites
were created for free or are expired which means a large percentage of the
people you contact will be inactive/haven't paid

The way to make it obvious is through marketing ;). In my previous comment I
tried to give some examples of how the paysites distinguish themselves from
the free sites.

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froo
One thing you might not have considered is increasing the price (depending on
your service).

The reason I'm suggesting this is that you could always position yourself as a
premium service as some people will always choose a more expensive option if
they feel they are getting a superior product.

This of course might not apply to your particular segment, but if so, it's
definitely an option.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pricing#Premium_pricing>

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mschaecher
Compete on aspects other than price.

If your product is truly better--there is one advantage you want to hold.

Make sure you have developed and designed an amazing first user experience.
Sign up and user the competitors app--What sucks? What could be better? What
wows you? Make the experience so good people want to pay you

Another good one, compete on service/support. It takes commitment but if
products are very similar, the service and support can be presented as what
you are really paying for.

Check their user forums/FAQ/Knowledge Base/GetSatisfaction, whatever they
have, find out what current users gripes. wishes, and problems are. Use that
intelligence in your product development and messaging/marketing.

Out. Hustle. Them.

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known
You need to be _connected_. Hire a competent sales man.

