The need to pay for storage is understandable, but in trying to turn free-plan users into paying customers, companies seem to misunderstand how seemingly small pricing and feature changes can make their product entirely unappealing. How many of Slack's free users would have been willing to sign up in the first place if they knew a 90-day-history limit would be implemented one day? How many would have signed up at all if they knew that at some point they'd be forced to go from paying nothing at all to paying $87 a year per user?
I understand that to some companies their free or low-priced tiers end up being more of hassle than it's worth. But an $87 jump in order to access essential, previously available features seems like a good way to chop off your long tail of low volume users. Such a change could be deadly to a service's popularity and long-term prospects. Or maybe not.
I use Slack’s free version in a 2-person workspace with just my partner. We use it to message each other during the day. It probably costs Slack almost nothing, but now we’re getting somewhat cut-off.
I’ve also advocated for Slack at my company of several hundred employees, at multiple previous companies, and would’ve continued to at future companies. Mostly because they’ve had goodwill and been a joy to use in my personal life.
But now I’m mad at them, and going to move to a new chat platform, with my partner, on our tiny little instance.
Will me being mad at Slack affect their bottom line? Probably not today… but when more people like me have moved past Slack and see it as old annoying tech, maybe it’ll start to have an affect. We’ll see.
Sure, I get the theory. My glib response is that I do not believe a business tool kicking out "freeloaders" (in the nicest sense of the term) is a factor to me using it for a business. Why would I care? I want a communication tool for a business! Having to pay for loss leading is annoying!
Free tiers exist to help with onboarding and testing, the existence of free plans that allow more or less indefinite usage is an obvious mistake for something like Slack IMO.
I think if Slack had shown up with a free plan at 90 days history (really, 90 days/5 GB would be the "reall" thing), then people wouldn't bat an eye. It feels obvious that the solution here would be to grandfather old workspaces into the old model but .. shrug.
The pricing step is crazy. There's no way it matches the expense from Slacks side, but I guess they're just saying "you're not our target market" by charging that much per user.
The weird thing is that if that's the case, their target market doesn't really need a free tier at all - maybe a time limited demo. So I expect more restrictions in the future.
I understand that to some companies their free or low-priced tiers end up being more of hassle than it's worth. But an $87 jump in order to access essential, previously available features seems like a good way to chop off your long tail of low volume users. Such a change could be deadly to a service's popularity and long-term prospects. Or maybe not.