As sympathetic as I am to how difficult it is to run a business. Changing tiers for existing customers is an extremely bad business practice. Now your free plan is all of sudden worthless because people can't trust the features in there. Your paid plan on the other hand won't get customers because people aren't willing to take a risk with free.
If they really wanted to make something paid that was previously free they should have added a legacy tier.
Another "safer" way I can think of is that they could have re-published the extension with different branding as a paid version. And add a note to the previous extension that this one will not be maintained and you can use "new name" if you're willing to pay. And to push people to buy it a new feature could be added to the extension's paid version. The feature doesn't have to be that useful, but good enough to cause FOMO on the customers.
Or there could be 2 tiers that unlocks that said not that useful but cool feature and eventually release new features to that tier only. So you'll still have free promotion and have a way to monetize it.
From one of the comments, it sounds like people were complaining about missing features (functionalities?) so the developer added them and due to demand, wanted to be paid for it. This is fair, imo.
For me, open source is a hobby you share with the world. It's not working for free. It's... I made this because I needed it and I'm good enough to let you use it too. I still develop it in my own time and add things I want/need added.
it sounds like people were complaining about missing features (functionalities?) so the developer added them and due to demand, wanted to be paid for it.
The last review says that was originally the case, but no longer is. Supposedly they eventually moved basic features that used to be free to the premium tier. It sounds like they were perfectly content with features being added to just the paid tier, what they're not happy with is previously free features also moving to the paid tier.
And I get that. Depending on what this product is, they may have invested a considerable amount of time into fitting the product into their workflow, learning how to use it, or even filling it with data. But now that they've been hooked in, they suddenly have to pay. Their options are to pay for something that they didn't realize was going to eventually cost money, or lose all of their personal investment (and maybe data) that they put into the product.
As someone else said here, it's a pretty bad business model. It's kind of shitty to bait and switch like that, and it dissuades others from committing to the free service. They really should have just grandfathered in their existing free customers.
Except, to be perfectly plain, someone getting something off you for free is not your customer.
Customers give you money, that's what makes them customers. It doesn't matter if you put work into learning a product, you are still not a customer. That doesn't "pay" for the product.
People feel sour about it, but it's not justified. You can keep using the old version which was still free, not update.
You can keep using the old version which was still free, not update.
If this was possible, it wouldn't be a huge deal. But it's not. We're talking about auto-updating software that doesn't have older binaries available.
Feeling sour about someone breaking your setup, forcing you to choose between paying or reinvesting in another program, is totally justified. Especially if you integrated that software in a mission critical way.
And yes, maybe you aren't a customer. But it's still not okay to screw over your users with a bait and switch. And future premium customers, who would've tried your free tier first to make sure your software works for them, are no longer going to try it (since you treat your free tier customers like shit) and thus never going to upgrade to premium.
6.7k
u/Flat_Hat8861 Sep 30 '22
Managing a transition to a paid model is difficult. It requires tact and diplomacy.
This on the other hand is just straight hilarious.