

Zendesk releases a free plan - D-mo
http://www.zendesk.com/blog/donate-20-to-ucsf-get-zendesk-starter-free

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JeremyBanks
This isn't a "free plan", even if the cost is small and doesn't go to them.
(It's $20/year to a charity, if you didn't RTFA.) Their own homepage calls it
"Better than FREE", even which I find less misleading.

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latchkey
I appreciate the idea on the donation. Anything for a good cause.

It seems like the starter and regular plans are pretty anemic when it comes to
services. For example, we are witholding proper security (SSL) until you pay
more?!

Really, this is just designed to just push the customer into a higher paying
plan. The service isn't really useful for most businesses until the Plus plan.

I'd rather that they just get rid of the starter and regular plans entirely.
Two plans, Plus and Enterprise. Simple and would really make the comparison
page really clean.

Just say buy the plus plan and we'll donate $20 to your choice of charity (and
then name a few I can choose from, instead of just picking one). Effectively,
that is what will happen anyway with the current system.

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wvl
From <http://www.zendesk.com/product/compare> it seems that SSL encryption is
provided on the starter plan. Only hosting of an ssl certificate for custom
domains isn't, which seems fair.

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latchkey
You are right. I got confused in the myriad of options in that giant
comparison chart.

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dclaysmith
That's a fantastic idea. Hopefully they'll post a followup and let us know how
it affected business.

At some point Square was donating 1 cent per transaction--but can't find
anything about it on their website. Anyone know if they are still doing this?

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scoutlandish
There is a separate free plan for startups associated with ycombinator and
other incubators. Details can be found here.
<http://www.zendesk.com/product/features/startups>

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drewda
Atlassian does this with their software too. It's great to be able to start
using their packages for a $10 donation each.

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ecaron
How about a plan that doesn't involve a 5x cost increase when you go from 3 to
4 users? Now that's something I'd upvote!

