“You certainly want to know now if the Personal edition was worth the trouble. Well, fortunately it was. Not more than ten weeks after the SmartInspect 1.0 release, we already have thousands of downloads of the Personal edition – and that for a very specific product. We get a lot of valuable feedback which helps us to improve our software. We also already have several customers who used the Personal edition and later decided to purchase the full version. We went from being completely unknown to having several dozens customers in only ten weeks. It seems to pay off. ”
2 Comments
Thanks for a great article. Two quick points:
1. I’m not sure whether reducing piracy is that much of a benefit in this instance. Perhaps less people pirate it, but if they were willing to pirate it they’re certainly not going to pay for the full version. I’d prefer not to have to deal with those types of people at all (I don’t want to offer support to someone who would have pirated my software).
2. The idea of free software applies more widely as well, clearly. I am thinking specifically of web applications. Many vendors (such as 37signals) have cut down free versions of their web apps. Additionally, with my web app (SiteVista), we’re shortly going to release a freeware tool which will be of great use to our target market. It’s not a cut down version of our main application, but rather it’s complementary. We’re hoping that it will achieve much of what you’ve said, and help to spread the word about our main app.
Hi Paul,
glad that you like the article. Regarding the piracy, I haven’t seen it this way. Interesting point of view. However, I’m not sure how much support those kind of users really demand since they seem to be more interested in your product than in your service.
Btw, I took a look at SiteVista and really like it. Sounds like a great idea!