[mattmanser]

Hmm, this is a really great product and I've loved using it, but 2 projects? That's so ridiculously low that 'free forever' seems a bit hollow and vacuous now. It would be better if you just came out and said it. Are you just supposed to go one humungo project now?

I'm certainly not paying a monthly recurring fee for a mock up tool to play with side projects! I could see upgrading it for the collaboration aspect for clients, but for toy and hobby projects you've seemingly just killed the tool.

Calling it 'using in a casual manner' is bad, how is having a project per idea and being limited to 2 ideas 'casual'? A helpful compromise?!?

Personally I think you've focused on completely the wrong thing to go premium for. I'm surprised you didn't go private projects & apps/dropbox integration (standard) > revision control & master pages (pro) > collaboration (ultimate) or something like that. But that's just the programmer in me I guess, we all know that multiple projects won't add to your costs, just massive inconvenience to the free users.

Still, it's your product so do what you want and you're allowed to change your mind, just don't expect a lot of people cheering you on. I'm just personally sad I probably won't use it any more as I'm not going to faff around trying to organise multiple thoughts into one humongous project.

As a reminder of what you originally said when you introduced it to HN:

We'll keep the main functionality free (with some reasonable limitations). We plan on adding some really cool collaboration and annotation/feedback features soon that we'll probably ask a buck or two for.

I just don't see 2 projects as reasonable at all but I always suspected something like this would happen as the tool was just too well done. Note that I would probably buy it for a reasonable fixed price (like $50-70) but obviously the storage, etc. will constantly be a drain on you. It is better than balsamiq, but not better enough to be dipping into my pocket every month for the rest of my life. The problem with saas I guess.

EDIT: I guess this is the problem with an online tool being useful to both individuals and corporations. I can see real value from a recurring fee from dropbox as an individual, but a mock up tool? For what (should) be a desktop app that's gone to a sass model, are individuals really going to pay a recurring fee for this? On the other hand, it's a perfectly reasonable price for businesses, even small and micro ones if you use it regularly. I would definitely sign up if I do more consultancy again. Perhaps I'm cheap as an individual, but to me it's just far too expensive for my personal use case.

[moqups]

Thanks a lot for the candid feedback!

It took us a while (and more than 60,000 free users!) to better understand our business metrics and see what our opportunities are until we've made these not always easy decisions. We also had a look at what our competing products are offering and many times it's nothing more than a free, very limited trial.

Let me try to shed some more light about the free version: - We've tried to avoid disabling common sense functionality just for forcing users to upgrade. Unlimited saving, unlimited exporting, unlimited pages and so on. Keep in mind that all mockups are throwaway artifacts that one can simply export and then safely delete their projects. It's a little inconvenient but it's not a finite resource that users can't replenish like in a case of a time limited trial. The premium features are typically wanted by business users who like a little more granular privacy settings, run multiple projects through their many customers or prospects or have extremely big projects that can benefit from productivity features like master pages. The premium users even avoid using our service for free if they don't have some confidence that someone is running a sustainable and trustworthy business in behind.

- There is no data loss when you downgrade from a premium plan. The only thing we do is gracefully disable some premium functionality and restrict editing (not viewing) to projects created in the premium period.

- All the users who signed up before got to keep their projects and the editing capabilities. Some of them have more than 150 huge projects.

- On top of this, we are giving non profit and educational organizations as well as open source teams free premium plans.

- We rarely say no to users asking for discounts or extended trials if they can't afford the premium plans.

Our most important goal for us is to create a business we can grow so we can bring more value for our users - we really have a ton of great features in the pipeline that we're excited about.

Time will tell whether we've made the right steps or if we have to make certain adjustments to our business.

Thanks again!

Edit: line breaks

[mtrimpe]

You could also consider having a limit of 1 or 2 private projects and make all the others public.

If you give public mockups a publicly accessible page and create a base representation that is indexable by Google, it might be an interesting source of additional incoming traffic (and leaves you open to become something like SpeakerDeck for Mockups.)

[moqups]

We decided to avoid publishing an indexable listing of public projects so we can protect the privacy of our users at least to the extent where they don't publish the unique, indecipherable link themselves ("Available to anyone who knows the link"). We think it's the most ethical approach for handling this situation.

[cristianpascu]

Just the other day I paid $20 for a pen. You know, half the 'pen and paper' alternative.

[calinet6]

Hey, I love nice fountain pens more than anyone, but you can get a good pencil and paper pad for a couple bucks.

[cristianpascu]

That's true. I wanted this specific pen for its quality.

My point actually was that it's pretty much non-sense to complain about a free tool. You probably did the right thing, as a developer, you built your own system.

[mattmanser]

Why is it nonsense? They posted it here, do they not want feedback? This isn't a free advertising site you know. Once you say something like free, you can't take it back.

In case you weren't aware it's $10 per month. Per month. Say your $20 pen lasts 5 years. Add maybe another $30 in refills. That's $50. In the same time moqups would cost you $500.

And also if you stopped paying they might take away everything you'd 'written'.

I certainly think it's worth the money for companies. Just not for individuals.

[cristianpascu]

Matt, I don't think feedback is non-sense. Never! What I find difficult to understand is why one would expect something to be free. And more, negotiate on that 'free product'. It's really not about moqups here, but about products in general.

And I think that it's not about companies vs. individuals. It doesn't matter if you're a company or not. What it matters is that the products does a job for you and you benefit from it somehow. There is a profit you gain from using the product. You should accept the idea of making a little investment in order to get that profit. You don't get free coffee at Starbucks, or free chips or McDonalds or free breakfast at a gas station, just like that. You pay for everything in the real world.

Software should be cheap, but not free. My opinionated 2 cents. :)

[moqups]

Hi Matt, don't worry - we really appreciate and reflect upon all kinds of feedback, specially the most honest ones. We may disagree on various topics, but that's what makes a good debate!