The Funk Blog

The profound rantings of the one like Tom Atkinson… and now art gallery and shop.

Dear Xero, (open letter)

Dear Xero,

I'd love to try Xero but the free trial period is too short to risk wasting time on and ditching; but the $25/month too expensive to this point since I've never tried it.

I invoice monthly and have just a handful of clients and last year only pulled barely enough for minimum wage for myself, not that really ever even paid myself barring a few "Directors Drawdowns".
Trying to launch a another (actual) charity soon is also going to be "interesting" and not that lucrative.
On your pricing page https://www.xero.com/nz/pricing/ you say Create and send 5 invoices - is that per month? A little extra detail could be nice? Seems kinda stingy and kinda arbitrary. The same amount averaged over a year - say 60 per year would likely be fine some months I have a burst of invoices go out. Looking at that I can really see you want everyone on $50/month. I guess it's all about the 24/7 support yeah? Makes sense (I've work on a help-desk before).
Considering I'm a one man band and I don't have to pay anyone else for my own time, I'm happy (ish) using this crazy homebaked Excel sheet I been sweating over in the hopes of saving $600/year, but I sure would love to even try Xero for a bit.... but I am religiously opposed to time limited trials such as your 30 day on.
I suggest the following changes to your pricing structure:
  1. Convert "Free Trial" into "Forever Free" but
    1. with no 24/7 free support
    2. cap it at 200 bank transactions, 60 invoices (no time limit! this is company lifecycle stuff!)
    3. up to 5 users
  2. Boost by about x4 the numbers inside your Starter Pack as such:
    1. 20 invoices per month instead of just that stingy 5
    2. 20 purchase orders per month instead of 5
    3. Cap both the invoices / purchase orders if you must at say 240/year each

Why Do This?

Because it creates deep trial usage and therefore increased chance of customer entrenchment. I mean... if I had entered 60 invoices into a Forever Free trial, I know I'd probably be at that point where I felt I had gotten such a good deal I was ready for Start and to get access to that free 24/7 support. In fact, it mite be that I switch to starter sooner just to get that.

Considering my religious opposition to 30-day trials - by concept and execution style of time limited trials, maybe worth a thought?

 

Regards, Tom.

PS...

What is it exactly that sucks about 30 day software trials?

So it's like 3 days before the trial ends and you're like "dang, I'm so busy I forgot to check this thing out - but I had better give this software one last chance before it times out" and maybe need to get a new fake email to re-register another trial (or call the friendly helpdesk for a reset); and you never really get to pour your heart out into it. If you have a forever free tier, or say a 2 year trial, you get more entrenchment.

PS... I'm gonna checkout Accomplish Cashmanager at their trial is generous: "enter and process up to 50 transactions"

http://nz.accomplishglobal.com/cashmanager-trial-download/

Posted by tomachi on July 17th, 2015 filed in Rants