"Web App Service Plan Subscriptions": comment by John Reeve

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:43:08 EST

Your scout product sounds interesting, especially considering the sheer number of web-based applications out there today. It’s a good niche to fill.

Meanwhile, another one to check out is Intervals. Our pricing is as follows: Free/$20/$50/$100/$175

We limit by number of project, and not users, so Intervals will scale better as your company grows.

"Web App Service Plan Subscriptions" by derek

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:44:00 EST

We’re working on our subscription plans for Scout. While working on the plans, we took a look at what other subscription-based services are charging for access.

There are some definite similarities, but a couple of peculiar differences.

Below is a quick sampling of what we found:

Service	Plan Options*	Credit Card Required?^	Free Plan Generosity
Basecamp Project Management	Free $12 $24 $49 $99 $149	Yes	Gives you a solid overview. You’re walled into 1 project, can’t upload any files, but you can invite unlimited people, create todos, send messages, etc.
Highrise Contact Management	Free $12 $24 $49 $99 $149	Yes	Very limited. 2 users, no file storage, and a single case (a way to group items together). It’s difficult for us to judge it unless we’re all using it to share information, and we can’t do that with the free plan.
BlinkSale Invoicing	Free $12 $24 $49	Yes	Very nice. Only major limitation is 3 invoices per-month.
FamSpam Family email, photo gallery, and archive	Free $12 $24 $49	No	Free Plan is pretty open – 4 family members, 10MB of storage, 100 photos.
Wufoo HTML Form Builder	Free $9 $24 $69 $199	Yes	It’s enough. You’re limited to 3 forms, 3 reports, and 10 fields per/form. No file storage.
FogBuzz on Demand Bug Tracking	$25 per/user	No	N/A
CrazyEgg Web Analytics Visualization	Free $9 $19 $49 $99	Yes	Very generous. Track 4 pages, limited number of visits. Stats are updated in real-time, limited tracking and sharing.

* - All prices per/month
^ - Only applies to paid plans

All of the services but BlinkSale and Wufoo are dramatically more useful with more people. Why then does Highrise’s free plan only allows 2 users (initially it was a single user)? 37Signal’s older product on the list, Basecamp, has unlimited users on the free plan.

37Signal’s pricing model is widely copied (free/$12/$24/$49).

FamSpam and FogBuzz on Demand allow you to signup for a paying plan without supplying a credit card. I assume after 30 days you need to enter credit card information. It’s an interesting idea because sometimes you don’t know if you need an advanced feature until you try it. The tricky part about this strategy is handling accounts that don’t decide to pay. Do you suspend all functionality or just parts of the application that paid plans can’t access? How to you handle access to data they may no longer have access to on a free plan?

On the surface, CrazyEgg appears to be the most generous with their free plan. Many people may only want heat maps on a couple of pages anyway and how often the data is gathered may not be a major factor. There are a lot of people that could use their free plan perpetually.

Being too generous isn’t necessarily a good thing. It takes time and resources to support free accounts, and that can take away from enhancements and service offerings to paying customers. Blinksale may have the best balance. You get most of the features, and if you’re willing to pay for an invoicing solution, you’re probably sending more than 3 invoices a month.

The Napkin ~ A Blog By Highgroove Studios comments on Web App Service Plan Subscriptions

"Web App Service Plan Subscriptions": comment by John Reeve

"Web App Service Plan Subscriptions" by derek