[jamieson-becker]

We do something similar to this at Userify / ssh key management (disclaimer: I'm the founder/CEO):

We give away 20 servers for free -- no invoice, no credit card needed, nothing. Once you exceed 20 servers, we charge (it's about $70/month).

You'd think that 20 servers is way too much to give away, but actually about 76% of our servers are on the paid plan and a huge percentage of our customers come from the invitation referrals when people change companies or consult for multiple companies.

(Our pricing might be too low and our product might be a bit too technical and scare off a lot of people who might not even know what SSH is, but for now that acts as a filter and keeps our support costs low; it's working for us, although we'll probably lighten up a bit on the technical homepage in the near future.) Also, the SaaS product acts as a frictionless testing area for people who actually just want to deploy the on-premise version, which accounts for approximately 40% of our revenue.

Our customers like the product and we have grown with many of them from free to paid. We're growing a startup for the long haul and don't have to demonstrate any particular growth rate to anyone.

The advice in this article works. Build something that provides some useful utility to people, and give as much away as you can. Most people will not abuse it and will return the favor as they grow.

[chdaniel]

And that's the wonderful thing Jamieson, even if people would abuse it, you kicking them is a few clicks away. And given that one provides something of value, the premium plans will cover for them.

So so glad to see you winning with this "strategy" — it's not a strategy IMO, it's the forward way of living and conducting business. I'll send you an email, would like to connect!

> We're growing a startup for the long haul and don't have to demonstrate any particular growth rate to anyone.

That's the ultimate level of power and freedom. I wish you well.

Ch Daniel

[jamieson-becker]

> even if people would abuse it, you kicking them is a few clicks away

We take a pretty liberal approach to this :) there are a few companies on the platform now who just create a lot of companies and keep them all below 20 servers (that's pretty easy to monitor) but so far we haven't kicked anyone yet, and there's also a legitimate reason to do that (if you're an MSP and have multiple clients). We just send an email to clarify if we think it's an issue.

> I'll send you an email, would like to connect!

Sure thing - it's first.last @ userify! Great to meet you Ch Daniel and thanks for your nice comment!

[chdaniel]

I think you meant "who just create a lot of users" (...and keep them all below 20 servers)?

I got mad love for you for doing this. Just tweeted at you but sending you an email now