Should you have a free plan for your SaaS?
Here's what I think after serving 2,000 free plan users on @hostifi_net...
Here's what I think after serving 2,000 free plan users on @hostifi_net...
No.
Some reasons why...
1. Lack of commitment to finish onboarding. If the user paid to start with, they'd be more likely to invest the time into onboarding. If they onboard successfully, they don't churn.
1. Lack of commitment to finish onboarding. If the user paid to start with, they'd be more likely to invest the time into onboarding. If they onboard successfully, they don't churn.
2. Security. Free plans can open you up to account flooding, DoS, and other unauthorized pentesting opportunities which can create headaches even if your app is following best security practices.
3. Abuse. In my case, several legitimate businesses that should have been paying customers were instead signing up with new free plan email accounts for each network deployment to get around the free plan device and site limitations.
4. Confusion. Users sign up for the free plan when they really should have signed up for the paid plan, they see the free plan is missing features that they need, and leave. Those features were on the paid plan but they didn't read the comparison.
5. Bad reviews. Getting a bad review from a free plan user is the worst, especially when it relates to #4. 
6. Support quality decline. "Free plan users don't get support" doesn't work. You don't know which ones are going to stay free plan users or which ones are testing your support to see how good it is before they convert. You have to provide amazing support for all of them.
With all that said, the free plan really helped get our name out there early on, and lots of free plan users did refer paying customers. A lot of these are probably fixable like security, abuse, confusion. But the support problem is really the hardest one to handle.
