Ask HN: Do I charge for beta?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1286234

by anon_account • 16 years ago

9 7 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm working on a app that I want to use freemium on release. Do I charge for beta? Will it seem like I'm taking away features when I release?

nudge• 16 years ago

Other freemium apps have given the beta away for free with the promise of a lifetime discount for users of the beta. That seems like a nice compromise to me.

anon_account3• 16 years ago

thanks, that sounds like a good idea. I'm afraid I wasn't clear in the title, I obviously do not mean to charge for the regular part of the site!

staunch2• 16 years ago

Yes. Charge for the "mium" part for sure. You're not really testing the idea without the paid part being paid. The best reason though is that making money is very motivating.

anon_account3• 16 years ago

I'm curious about both side of things, but the idea of testing is making sure it works -- would be bad if they paid for something and it doesn't work.

staunch2• 16 years ago

Just be very liberal with handing out refunds or service credits. People tend to be quite forgiving.

jacquesm• 16 years ago

Figure you're going to be doing 1:150 free signups and 1:2000 paid signups. And that's if you do well. Beta testing is testing all your features with customers being aware that you are not yet 'officially open', so they'll be more forgiving when stuff does not work, but on average it should work most of the time and it is fine to charge for a beta period, you could:

- charge the full rate, and give credits when you mess up

- charge a reduced rate during the beta period, but advertise clearly the rates will go up once the beta is over

- charge a reduced rate and keep on charging that reduced rate after the beta is over for those that signed up during the beta period

The latter has one really nice advantage, retention will be insanely high for those customers because they really don't want to fall back in to the high bracket if they would let their payments lapse.

Ask HN: Do I charge for beta?

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