Michael Dubakov

🍿 A coda is a passage that brings a piece (or a movement) to an end. (@Grammarly acquired @coda_hq)

🍿 Free version of any SaaS collaborative tool is hard to design right.

There are many contradicting requirements for a free version of a collaborative SaaS software:

• You want to show full functionality.
• Single user is not enough, since you want to allow collaboration. In the ideal case unlimited users are great.
• Restrictions that will make it look like a trial are not good, since it is not a free version anymore, but just a camouflage trial.
• You have to add some significant restrictions to transition some (many?) accounts to paid accounts.

I really liked how @SlackHQ handled it few years ago. No users limitations, no data limitations, 2 integrations and a very limited search history. Our team used the free version of Slack for three years, but we had to migrate to paid plan eventually 💰.

In @fibery_io (your company's operation system) we were never happy with out free version. For many years we provided full functionality, but just for a single user. It means you could use Fibery as a PKM or try it alone, but it was not really possible to try real collaboration in a free version. Bad.

Then we removed free version completely and replaced it with 14 days trial. It got some positive effect on conversion time and MRR, but number of new leads dropped significantly, from ~1000 to ~600 per month. Fibery relies on word of mouth, and without free plan this channel has high friction. Bad.

Today we're releasing a new free plan, and it is a solid attempt to solve most of the problems above:

• Reverse trial. First, you will have a full version for 14 days and then you will have to make a deliberate choice: free or paid. @attio did great job here, check it out.
• 10 users limit. Good enough to try in a small team (we will consider unlimited users if the next restriction will be enough 🤞).
• 10 databases limit. Database in Fibery is a type of data, like Feature, Task, Project, etc. According our stats, 80% of accounts have more than 10 databases, so it should be a good restriction for a large team.
• Unlimited entities. It means that for a small team you can use Fibery for free forever, but eventually you might want to add new processes, and here will be your upgrade point.

It is really interesting to observer how this free plan will work out.

Check it out for yourself → https://t.co/lDRPyYNgUP