We’re in the Agile Project Management software business. Our Project Management Software is hosted in the cloud  - so we make money by charging a monthly fee to our customers.  Pretty traditional business model.

Last month we decided to try something, its not a new idea, and many companies have done it before us.  The idea - give our entry level product away for free.  For Bright Green Projects this is our personal plan – one user accessing one project. This normally costs $24/month.

Some people also refer to this as the Freemium model.  Skype price their product like this, Spotify do it, LinkedIn does it etc.

We have spent so much time talking about this and a lot of people are pretty interested in it, so I thought I’d blog about it.

5 Reasons For

1. Everyone loves free stuff

By giving our most basic product away for free – we hope we will attract potential customers to take a look at our product. Let’s hope they try Bright Green Projects on a small piece of work and  love it. Fingers crossed on a bigger project, they’ll upgrade to a paying account and use it with their whole team.

2. Free breaks down barriers

As our personal plan is free, people don’t even have to think about price, unless they really like our product and are thinking of having their whole team use it.  Great!

3. The Product Champion

We generally find one person will drive the product evaluation and will then just “show” other people in the team how it works etc. Giving away a personal plan free means that the “product champion” can really take their time and get to know Bright Green, before even worrying about money.

We offer a free 21 day trial on all of our paying plans so the whole team can try it first at no cost too!

4. Word of mouth

Most people find out about our tool through word of mouth.  We feel that more people will be encouraged to recommend our product to someone if the personal edition is free, as there is no money involved.

5. Let’s take it slow….get to know each other first

We really distinguish ourselves from our competitors as we offer great service and consultation to our customers.  We are all ex Project Managers, Analysts and Developers and our customers like that.

Once the customer gets know know us and understand how seriously we take this business, they’ll be more comfortable introducing Bright Green Projects to the rest of their business.

5 Reasons Against

You can’t please all the people, all of the time.

We have been advised by many people not to do this at all…..especially those who have been in the sales game for a long time.  A few reasons against offering a free version of Bright Green Projects.

1. It undervalues your product

If you give it away for free for one person, the customer will feel that they should never pay for it?

ie. Nothing for 1 user, should be nothing times 3 for three users? right?

2. Tire Kickers

We are all about our service. So we can’t exactly not offer it to customers on our free plan. The concern is that we will spend all of our time supporting customers who may actually never even pay for the product!

3. Fear

What if they take advantage of your generosity and share logins, put a huge strain on your infrastructure and cost you loads of money?

4. You’re running a business, not a charity!!

Enough said.

5. Nothing’s really free. In the end you always get what you pay for.

There are already many free Project Management Tools in the market, which are perpetually in beta, supported with advertising or that are free….for now!  We have also seen products that have been launched in order to advertise another area of their business such as consulting, training or development.

Bright Green Projects has been built from the ground up as a commercial Project Management Tool – we make money by selling licenses, most of the money we make, we put back into development, to keep iterating and evolving.  Do we want to be associated with free, potentially lower quality services?

Would love to hear your thoughts? Good idea or not?

If you are interested, take a look at our Agile Project Mangement Tool ……it’s free after all!