When Freemium Fails, and Doesn't

Yet for some, the "freemium" strategy is turning out to be a costly trap, leaving them with higher operating costs and thousands of freeloaders. That's what happened to Chargify LLC, a provider of billing-management software to small businesses, which used the freemium business model when it started out in 2009. The Needham, Mass., company gave away its software to merchants that billed fewer than 50 customers a month. If a merchant wanted to bill more than 50 customers monthly, then the business owner would have to start paying $49 a month.

Most Chargify users never became paying customers. Within a year, the company was on the path to bankruptcy. Chargify eventually put up a paywall for all users. Last month the 12-employee company became profitable, with more than 900 paying customers. The starter plan is $65 a month.

Start-ups are attracted to the freemium model because it is "deceptively simple"—lure users with free services until they're hooked, then charge for extras, said Vineet Kumar, a professor at Harvard Business School, who is currently working on a study of the model.

"The problem is, it's not always obvious what features should be free and which should be paid," he said. What's more, he added, offering too many features in the free version risks "cannibalizing your paid customers," while not offering enough might generate little interest all around

The freemium approach doesn't make sense for any business that can't eventually reach millions of users. Typically only 1% or 2% of users will upgrade to a paid product, said David Cohen, founder and CEO of TechStars, a start-up accelerator since 2007 with five U.S. locations.

About a quarter of the roughly 50 companies that participate in TechStars every year use a freemium strategy, he added.

The strategy also often isn't effective for businesses whose range of products is limited in scope, because paid users generally expect to get better or different versions of what they've already received free of charge. And it rarely makes sense for companies that sell products or services mostly to large businesses. Enterprise clients typically have budgets for buying goods and services, thus, they aren't as drawn to free products.

Steps to Making Freemium Work

1 Limit free offerings to avoid cannibalizing your paid customers. Expect your free-to-paid conversion rate to be less than 5%.
2 Promote both free and paid offerings, rather than focus just on acquiring paid users.
3 Create an incentive for free users to refer their friends to your service or product.
4 Clearly distinguish between free and paid plans, so users can see value in paying for more.
5 Create a natural progression from free-to-paid features, such as the option to buy extra storage space on a cloud service once a user runs out of free space.