While I entirely understand the need to charge and make money, I find the sudden and significant change in pricing jarring. Many people just went from 0 to $1200 per year.
I'm guessing the cost of supporting the formerly free (0-50 customers) tier is close to zero from a technical/infrastructure perspective, but relatively high from a support/feedback perpective.
People in the free tier will either grow or go out of business. For those that grow, your cost is the same - you'll have the same questions whether you charge them day 1 or day 100.
So the real issue is the cost of support for those who signup for the free tier and either flake out or go out of business.
In my opinion, the rate of customer growth you'll get from having a free tier is worth the extra support cost. With no barrier in place, people will try Chargify, see that it's a high quality product, and if they have a viable business, will use it. That was our experience.
With a barrier in place ($100/month from day 1), they'll do a lot of research and probably try the cheaper options before trying Chargify.
For our particular case, I'm quite happy with Chargify as a product, but quite unhappy about the way the pricing was handled. With the former pricing tier we had the luxury of growing in cost as we grew in revenue. With the new pricing structure we have an immediate unexpected cost.
Now we have to go and investigate the other recurring payment options, which bums me out entirely, since I was hoping we were well past that.
You should, at the very least, grandfather the old users into the old plan. In my opinion you should keep the free tier around, but find ways to reduce your support costs. For my business, we treat support questions as the leading indicator for where we need to make the product more intuitive. We invest in improving the product, thereby also reducing costs.
While I entirely understand the need to charge and make money, I find the sudden and significant change in pricing jarring. Many people just went from 0 to $1200 per year.
I'm guessing the cost of supporting the formerly free (0-50 customers) tier is close to zero from a technical/infrastructure perspective, but relatively high from a support/feedback perpective.
People in the free tier will either grow or go out of business. For those that grow, your cost is the same - you'll have the same questions whether you charge them day 1 or day 100.
So the real issue is the cost of support for those who signup for the free tier and either flake out or go out of business.
In my opinion, the rate of customer growth you'll get from having a free tier is worth the extra support cost. With no barrier in place, people will try Chargify, see that it's a high quality product, and if they have a viable business, will use it. That was our experience.
With a barrier in place ($100/month from day 1), they'll do a lot of research and probably try the cheaper options before trying Chargify.
For our particular case, I'm quite happy with Chargify as a product, but quite unhappy about the way the pricing was handled. With the former pricing tier we had the luxury of growing in cost as we grew in revenue. With the new pricing structure we have an immediate unexpected cost.
Now we have to go and investigate the other recurring payment options, which bums me out entirely, since I was hoping we were well past that.
You should, at the very least, grandfather the old users into the old plan. In my opinion you should keep the free tier around, but find ways to reduce your support costs. For my business, we treat support questions as the leading indicator for where we need to make the product more intuitive. We invest in improving the product, thereby also reducing costs.
Of course that's just my opinion.