[opal]

There is always a competitor willing to give more away for free with the bet that they can make up for it once they control the market.

This is for the WEB though where cost/user is low and cloning a product is easy. Other platforms are vastly different.

[jhancock]

In a time when VC money is scarce, fewer can play the "accumulate users and charge in the unforeseen future when all your competitors have died". In this type of market, freemium is a tough play.

Which is nice. I prefer old-fashioned biz models where you put out a product and quickly find out if people are willing to pay for it.

[opal]

Seeing if people are willing to pay for it is still a great metric. But until (if ever) the advertising bubble actually pops, extremely few web products will be best served by freemium.

I can count web freemiums that made more money than their free counterparts on half a hand.