Haha Thanks for the point of view - yeah it's a big splash but there was no hiding the fact so we just wanted to be totally transparent about it.
So far the replies from all our beta users has been exactly what we hoped for (expected), either "Thanks for the honesty" or "Cool, we were just checking it out, we're not in a position to need something like this now" or a few "Yeah screw you guys, delete my account I'm not using you anymore".
I understand a lot of your points, but I strongly disagree that we're regurgitating other peoples advice. This is taken exactly from our experiences.
And we're not telling anyone to get lost. We're explaining why we had to evolve and change our assumptions. If we carried the burden of every mistake we'd made as a startup, within a year we'd be so heavy we wouldn't be able to move anywhere!!!
(Oh and the blog theme is following a trend of about 20+ major startup blogs who switched to a typography led, single column design. We rebuilt the design a few months ago and tried to make it as much about the content as possible. I personally think the end goal was more like eerily similar to reading an eBook?)
Why don't you grandfather in your current free users and shut off the plan? That seems totally fair.
At present, it seems like bait and switch. You say it yourself in the post:
"One of the most prominent details we emphasized to everyone we spoke to in the early days of Trak.io was that we would offer a super generous Free plan."
So you got people to try and test your product based on this attractive premise, and now the ones who are perhaps too early stage to switch to a paid plan are stuck. With an analytics app, switching costs are pretty high.
Of course you have the ability to iterate, increase prices, etc.--and you should--I just think it should be done with a little more tact.
Haha Thanks for the point of view - yeah it's a big splash but there was no hiding the fact so we just wanted to be totally transparent about it.
So far the replies from all our beta users has been exactly what we hoped for (expected), either "Thanks for the honesty" or "Cool, we were just checking it out, we're not in a position to need something like this now" or a few "Yeah screw you guys, delete my account I'm not using you anymore".
I understand a lot of your points, but I strongly disagree that we're regurgitating other peoples advice. This is taken exactly from our experiences.
And we're not telling anyone to get lost. We're explaining why we had to evolve and change our assumptions. If we carried the burden of every mistake we'd made as a startup, within a year we'd be so heavy we wouldn't be able to move anywhere!!!
(Oh and the blog theme is following a trend of about 20+ major startup blogs who switched to a typography led, single column design. We rebuilt the design a few months ago and tried to make it as much about the content as possible. I personally think the end goal was more like eerily similar to reading an eBook?)