{"id":979,"date":"2023-09-26T17:30:06","date_gmt":"2023-09-26T16:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestudententrepreneur.org\/?p=979"},"modified":"2023-09-26T17:39:48","modified_gmt":"2023-09-26T16:39:48","slug":"free-products-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestudententrepreneur.org\/?p=979","title":{"rendered":"Free Products 101: When They Can Work and When They Won\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Dan Layfield<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\u00b7<\/span><\/span>

Follow<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div><\/span><\/div>

Published in<\/span>

Entrepreneur’s Handbook<\/p><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/span><\/div><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the most common questions in subscription products is, \u201cShould I have a free product?\u201d<\/p>\n

If you look at the current subscription companies worth billions of dollars, some have big-free products, like Spotify, NY Times, Trello or Slack. Others like Netflix, WSJ, Financial Times, BarkBox, or Your Utility Company don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

You can also point to larger, more enterprise-grade products that didn\u2019t start with a free tier, such as MongoDB, but later added one.<\/p>\n

Other companies, such as Palantir, never offered a free service tier.<\/p>\n

So, if you\u2019re a start-up founder or early-stage employee, how should you think about whether to have a free product?<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re going to have a free tier, how much should you give away?<\/p>\n

Initial Decision \u2014 Your Skills & Your Market<\/h1>\n

To give a bit of a background, most consumer subscription companies end up building a free product to help fuel their user acquisition.<\/p>\n

The traditional advice for investing in a free product is to \u201cthink of it like a marketing expense,\u201d which is sound advice. However, remember that it is still an expense.<\/p>\n

For most early-stage companies, the question is not \u201cShould I build a free product?\u201d but \u201cHow should I acquire users?\u201d. Free products are one of the ways.<\/p>\n

You should pick the one that is not only the most effective but also matches the skills of the team that you currently have.<\/p>\n

Early-stage companies are unlikely to be able to afford multiple acquisition methods at once, and this should be based more on what is easy for you to do.<\/p>\n

If your team is:<\/p>\n