Free Editions
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.Nice post by Dennis about SmartInspect and how they tried out giving away free editions. I thought about this alot with HelpSpot and really wanted to do it, especially for the MicroISV's out there. However, I just didn't see a way to get around support. That's the same problem Dennis had when he actually tried this.
At the end of the day when emails for help come in you're going to answer them if you're a customer service focused business. What's the point of a free addition if it only creates bad PR for you because when people have trouble you won't help them. And from there, once you give support that's essentially the ball game. Support is expensive in both time and money. So while it's nice to think that the free users would just use the forums for help it's not realistic and that throws off the entire cost/benefit structure of providing the free editions.
Discussion
Ian,
I am contemplating this issue right now. One idea I'm tossing around is to offer a free version that entails only limited support. By limited, I am thinking of only offering online tools FAQ/KB/Forum and 24-48 hour email response, but no phone support. Thoughts?
Created by Carmen Ferrara on 03.14.2006 10:03 am
Well, I think with a desktop app there's a little more wiggle room (though SmartInspect is desktop). The main thing for me is people often have questions with installation simply because it's a sever product and there's so many configurations and people installing PHP for the first time, etc.
At the end of the day I just think it's hard when someone desperately needs help to push them aside for 48 hours. So you'll end up just answering the email right away and that's that. Or if you do make them wait then they write bad things about you on their blog because your "bad" program crashed their computer and you wouldn't even help, etc.
What about a really long trial? Like 60 days or even 90 days. No feature limit, so if they're just going to use it once and leave they can do that. However, if over 2-3 months they use it a few times and dig it, perhaps you'll convert some of them to the paid version.
Created by Ian on 03.14.2006 10:03 am
I think you're right. In general, small/very small companies need to be very careful with customer support. It is not to be underestimated. Offering an unsupported, free version will most likely generate some level of support time. This needs to be factored in to the decision to offer a free version.
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Created by Carmen Ferrara on 03.14.2006 10:03 am