Appreciate the feedback. (Seriously, helps a lot!) What would be a price point that works for you? I definitely think there's room for a smaller plan, so I'd love to hear your thoughts. I've done smaller custom plans in the past for makers who are just getting started with an app (or in the process of building one) with a low active user limit. But in the end, $288/yr is not that much for something that helps you make money--especially considering that you'll likely have to spend money to make money as an app developer. And lastly, I don't think comparing a product to open source is the right thing to do--especially considering that you have to host Flask, distribute Electron, etc., all which cost money.
$288/yr is not that much for something that helps you make money
Whether it's a lot or not depends entirely on how much you're making. For someone who has a $500/year side project $288 is half your revenue. For someone who has a $50,000/year side project $288 is trivial. If you're marketing to people who haven't yet launched then most of your customers are in the first group - and that makes your product sound quite expensive.
If I had the need for your product I'd be much more likely to use it if the cost was something like $1/user/month, capped at $30/month.
There are two issues, for me. Firstly, a monthly price in dollars can be annoying for very small projects, as it's quite possible there will be a relatively large flat currency conversion fee from a bank. Paying that once hurts less than twelve times, even if it's not all that much money.
Secondly, I agree that it's far too much money for a weekender level. Bear in mind that most weekender projects will be using free tiers at various providers. This could easily swamp all other outgoings combined.
If you really do want to capture the weekender market I'd probably suggest cutting the cost to 1/3 of current and billing annually.
Appreciate that hosting isn't free, but having some sort of $0 plan would greatly drive adoption, at fairly little cost. I personally would be unlikely to launch a product that cost me a monthly fee just to run, even with zero paying users. Once I have paying users, I become a lot more willing to pay you. You could consider something like the following plan: Testing. $0/mo, 50 users, no support.
It'll be more effective marketing than anything else you could reasonably buy, and unless you have serious architectural/scaling issues shouldn't be too expensive for you.
I agree. I think that the pricing is fair for when you have paying customers on the system (at least for my business model), but the 7 day trial isn't really enough time to do a proof of concept to see if Keygen would work for me. I know most companies will extend your free trial if you ask nicely, but ugh. I should have a free option available until I get to Prod.
If you want an extended trial, I'm all for hooking you up with one that lasts until you launch (or whatever is needed for you). Though not something I want to do by default at the moment, simply due to the fact that free users usually require more support than paid users.
