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uh, i disagree. strongly.

if you are incorporating their product into commercial projects of your own, how in the world do you come to the conclusion that it should be free?

to segment: raise your prices according to the utility your product provides. make money. this kind of product is changing the way enterprise software is built and sold and viewed at large. i will gladly pay good money to a dozen small saas startups rather than oracle or microsoft or whoever. i've worked for the giants and it's a complete shit show. i know where that money goes and it's not pretty.

i LIKE paying for saas because it feels like i am engaging in an actual business transaction. i trust 'free' (as in gratis) solutions as far as i can throw them.

also, companies that under-charge are toxic elements in the marketplace - they push out healthy firms because they can subsidize the cost of operations and marketing with an unlimited budget of funny money. and when that solution your business is relying on goes out of business because they never had the inclination to make any money, that sucks.

try going to the market and asking about their freemium chicken.



No need to ask, your local super market or big box store probably already has a freemium model -- samples (http://imgs.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/parenting/2010/08...)

I do, however, whole hardheartedly agree with you sentiment about relying upon free services or saas.


yeah i guess i thought too quick on the supermarket. but a closer analogy would be eating an entire meal of samples every single day.


Retailers are often freemium btw. They have 0 margins on many items and make money on others. That's why best buy pushes warranties etc.


freemium doesn't mean no margin on the cost. it means no cost to the customer.




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