Counter to your counter, a person using software 5-6 times over a few years is almost never going to become a paying customer. They'll just cut you out entirely. But odds are they know similar professionals and could be a major promoter to potential power-users. Chatting with a few coworkers, none of us can come up with a single example of letting a trial expire, only to pay for isolated uses later. We had quite a few examples of software we thought might be valueable, but weren't prepared to pay having run out our trials. Three of us are in this state for Copilot alone.
It seems you're very focused on what people "oughta" pay for. But what matters is simply what people do pay for. You tell this story, but it seems very inconsistent with my experience or my understanding of pricing theory.
"It's free advertising" is an argument I see a lot, but I've never seen the numbers to see how much that actually matters in the real world. Well, I guess I've seen some, but it's always from ad companies anyways.
I own a media production company. We occasionally sell content to other media outlets. Early in our existence, we were routinely contacted by reporters asking for permission to use our content with credit to us. I used to respond by saying yes, but only if I could use some of their content, with credit to them. Obviously, they never agreed.
> It seems you're very focused on what people "oughta" pay for. But what matters is simply what people do pay for. You tell this story, but it seems very inconsistent with my experience or my understanding of pricing theory.
I don’t know who the “you” is referring to. All
I said was that in my personal experience, there have been occasions (not frequent, but it has happened) where I’ll buy a perpetual license to something for a task I use a few times a year. Because the $20 or whatever the license cost was worth the time I saved. In most cases, what I said was that if I didn’t use a piece of software after the trial expired, that was a good forcing function to figure out if it was something I find value in or not. And in most cases, the answer is going to be “I don’t need to buy this.”
I’m not at all focused on what people oughta pay for so I don’t know where you are misreading this.
I also said that for business and SaaS options like the OP article is about, things are completely different (your Copilot example). The comment I replied to was about consumer software trials and how they don’t think time limits make sense. I happen to disagree.
It seems you're very focused on what people "oughta" pay for. But what matters is simply what people do pay for. You tell this story, but it seems very inconsistent with my experience or my understanding of pricing theory.