“More expensive and less functional.”

That was the recommendation I had for a friend’s startup. Why? The free version of the company’s product works too damn well.

You’ve probably heard of Freemium. There’s also Previum and a dozen other variations I’m sure. The exact differences aren’t really worth getting into because all share the same truth: Something’s gotta break. And someone’s gotta pay to fix it.

But breaking a product is harder than it sounds. Products can break to different degrees and along many different dimensions. Time is one such dimension. With trial software, the user is given a few weeks to use the product.  If they like it, they continue using it. Rdio gave users three days to try it out. Balslamiq gives seven days. Basecamp gives 30 days. As you can see the degree of this breakage varies widely.

Another related dimension is usage in which the product breaks after being used a certain number of times. Or when a certain amount of use is reached. For example, Pandora breaks after 40 hours of usage in a month.

But most products are broken along some feature dimension. AirVideo converted me into a paying user in (a ridiculously fast) five minutes by making the product so broken that it demonstrated that the technology worked and was awesome, but I couldn’t browse all my videos making the product essentially unusable. And sometimes products are entirely broken, which is to say they exist entirely behind a paywall. Many dating websites continue to operate like this.

There’s a dizzying number of dimensions along with products can break. It’s limited only by a product’s feature set, a product’s complexity, and your creativity. Most products are simultaneously broken along several different dimensions, to varying degrees of breakage, and at different price points.

Building a product that’s correctly broken requires a strong product sense, and a willingness to experiment and charge money. Limit the free version too much and you lose users which could potentially be great sources of word of mouth marketing. Give too much away, and you’re cannibalizing your own business and shooting yourself in the foot. It’s a fine balancing act for sure!

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