Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation

"Maybe you think I can only do this because Instapaper is already popular. But it built its popularity while charging a lot for an iPhone app from the start."<p>AND there was a free version out.<p>He's neglecting the "critical mass" factor.<p>The free version helped him sell the full version until it reached that "critical mass" that was required for the popularity of the full version to continue to drive sales of itself.<p>I've personally found that by just offering a paid version of an app from the beginning is quite frustrating. But once I put out a free limited version, sales took off. So, MAYBE I'll try losing some of my free versions to see what happens, but I think that free-to-paid actually works just as well.

I second, third, and fourth the notion about pathological customers. iOS is practically training a generation of them. I'm glad they are far away from me.

There's some incorrect logic in there to point out.<p><i>"The math to explain this is simple: most Free users won’t give me anywhere near $3.50 worth of ad impressions."</i><p>So, a free user is less valuable than a paid user, fair enough. But not 100% of people who would use the free version will buy the paid version.<p>As he said in the second paragraph, <i>"it’s hard to say which portion of the increase, if any, is attributable to Free’s absence"</i><p>While I'm not saying this is for sure, it is a possibility that, while one user with adverts gives him less money than one user who pays, cutting off all the free users could lose more money in advertising than it generates in sales.

Excellent analysis and line of thinking. The tech community really needs to give up the idea that hard work should be given away for free. Trail periods are fine, but legitimate businesses need real cash flow, and very, very few can survive off advertising alone.

How does he know nobody will buy the Android app? I barely use any free apps other than the ones that come with Cyanogen Mod.<p>Titanium Backup? Paid. ROM Manager? Paid. Treking? Paid. Android IRC? Paid. X-Plane? Paid.<p>Android users have no problems paying for apps. Non-Android developers are afraid of the unknown.

This post reminds me of a post by Jacques Mattheij about an experiment he did by doubling the price of his app:<p><a href="http://jacquesmattheij.com/Double+your+price+(and+no,+Im+not+kidding)" rel="nofollow">http://jacquesmattheij.com/Double+your+price+(and+no,+Im+not...</a><p>These two articles definitely make a case for experimenting with the pricing based on your market and target audience to find the sweet spot.

I've been using the free Instapaper iPhone app for some time, until it just completely stopped working. Trying to update, it would tell me that there was no network connection. Uh, wrong. Over and over. Eventually I logged out, wiped the local cache, and tried logging in fresh. And what did I get? A blank page with "403" at the top.<p>My impression of the app at this point was that either the developer is a fuck up or that I've been geo-locked out because I'm not in the U.S. Actually the second implies the first. I didn't care, I just stopped using Instapaper.<p>On the basis of this post, I took a leap of faith. Despite a complete failure of user experience with the free app, I bet $5 that maybe the paid app would, well, work. And so far it has.<p>Marco, if you're listening, you make some great points in this post, but your upselling in my experience is... as described.

As an alternative viewpoint, his thinking seems incredibly shortsighted. When it comes time to launch "InstaAlbum, share your family photos", he is going to have 1/3 the potential audience to draw customers. 3x the existing customers could make the difference between the top of the charts and the press recognition that goes with it.<p>Part of his rational is that some tiny percentage of the free customers complain, and write negative reviews. Marco should man up and simply accept he has a good product and is a talented developer. That way he doesn't have to give a damn about the haters. It is sad that the %.1 of the population that is inherently bitchy, is driving his business decisions.

I use Instapaper free and am happy with it. The ten article cap doesn't bother me because I clear my backlog quickly. I actually like choosing from ten articles, reading one, archiving it and seeing a new one pop into the menu. Free used to not save my place in the article and I almost upgraded for that, but then Free started to save my place and I didn't upgrade. I am vaguely aware of some other features Pro might offer, but ignorance is bliss...

I think Readitlater (and lately Readability) strips down the content much better than Instapaper. Instapaper always has a lot of weird extraneous stuff around the text. The others do not. +1 for them.

Instapaper has little need for a free app because it's so unique; there are few paid alternatives, let alone free ones. If you're building something less extraordinary, offering a free app with an in-app upgrade path makes more sense.<p>The free-to-pro transition seems to work better with a single app using in app purchases (to remove ads and unlock features) than with two separate apps.<p>It's possible to structure the experience in a free app to make the upgrade more compelling too. Thermo and Astronut (both for iPhone) are two examples that handle it well in different ways: Astronut (game) presents an upgrade option when you reach the end of the first stage; Thermo (temperature widget) shows an ad at the bottom with a tempting X button -- when you tap that, you're prompted to upgrade.

I totally get Marco's decision to go with a paid version of his app. Of course, he doesn't provide an option for publishers to opt out of providing free versions of their content, which is what they're doing when Instapaper strips all the ads off of them.

Great article. I particularly liked the points about filtering out undesirable and unprofitable customers. Some clients really are just wrong, and far more trouble than their business is worth.

I recently bought the paid app, based on the recommendations of a friend and the number of positive reviews in the app store, but am quite disappointed in what I got in return for my $4.99. I won't turn this into a review of the functionality or criticize the developer for wanting to increase sales, but I will say that buyers should have a way to vet the product before purchasing it (there was no free option when I purchased it).

<p><pre><code> Not only did sales increase incrementally, but nobody seemed to notice. </code></pre> What does this mean? This "nobody even noticed!" attitude he expresses several times seems <i>very</i> ignorant to me. Sure, very few people heard that Instapaper had a free iPhone app, didn't look for it right away, then a month later searched for it, saw it wasn't in the App Store, and emailed or tweeted Marco personally asking what happened. This is the only chain of events I can see leading to a potential user giving Marco direct feedback, the lack of which is what he seemed to interpret as "nobody noticed."<p>If you change a bunch of road signs, but everyone from the neighborhood is on vacation and so no one sees the new configuration and exclaims "What is this?!", does that suddenly mean that new drivers won't act differently in response to the new road sign configurations? Note that assuming that somehow "everyone from the neighborhood is on vacation" is <i>not at all</i> an unrealistic assumption to make. People who had already downloaded the free app were golden when he removed it, so long as they didn't wipe their iPhone or upgrade. You could argue that maybe they would've thought "huh, why haven't I gotten updates in a while?" First of all, I doubt anyone thinks like that. I know I certainly don't think about updates until the App Store tells me I have 10 and I get frustrated at it; I only notice when apps require updates, not when they don't require updates. Second of all, they may have just thought the free app would be getting less updates than the paid one.<p>And there are countless other reasons why "no one has personally emailed me about the absence of this" is a terrible reason to conclude "nobody really cared" and especially (what I think he is implicitly getting at) "no potential future buyers of the paid app were turned off by the absence of a free app." Maybe they only cared a little and got bored once they couldn't find it in the app store, but otherwise would've been engaged by the app or (since he acknowledges that there are few converts) have been interested enough to tell friends who would eventually pay for it. Maybe, and this is _crazy_ to propose, a significant number of geeks went looking for the free app having heard a lot about Instapaper, saw there was no free app, were pissed, but didn't know or think or care to email Marco about it; maybe they thought he did it purposefully and didn't want to bug him, maybe they were intimidated, maybe they didn't know who Marco was, etc.

I'm one Android user who would definitely pay $5 for an official Instapaper app.

Perhaps the free app might've converted better if Marco had added an in-app purchase to upgrade to the full version.

I have a lot of respect for all the hard work, especialy since I am hooked to Instapaper like services, and getting rid of the free version might be a good move I think. Now, he seems to have such a policy of ignoring his competition in his talks.<p>I would guess one reason he doesn't hear complaints about the loss of the free version is because ReadItLater and others have a free app to catch these users. He talks a lot about the cheapstakes that wouldn't upgrade, but the free version couldn't get me to register when I tried it. When it worked afterwards, it was so stripped down it wasn't funny.<p>In contrast the decision to buy the ReaditLater (same priced at the time) pro version was natural, and I kept the free version on devices I didn't care to sync.<p>At least, he is totally right, after using the Instapaper free version, I am bitching a lot.

I had tried the free iPhone app and could never get the thing to accept my credentials. So, I gave up and didn't give it much thought.<p>But then I kept hearing about how great Instapaper was. I didn't get it. My experience with the free app was bad so I didn't know what I was doing wrong. Instead of writing a terrible review of the free one, I went ahead and purchased the paid app.<p>And now I'm hooked. I find Instapaper to be incredibly useful and love its simplicity. I then turned it on in my Twitter client, expanding my use even more.<p>The free app is a detriment to Instapaper rather than an asset. Marco is likely better off sticking with a great product customers are willing to pay for who end up loving the service, than having a mediocre app that doesn't build up a fan base that translates to paying customers.<p>Keep up the great work Marco!

Thoughtful approach on app pricing and customer selection.<p>The point that resonated with recent experiences was this one:<p>"How much effort do I really want to devote to satisfying people who are unable or extremely unlikely to pay for anything? (This is also a major reason why I have no plans to enter the Android market.)"

I applaud the fact that a developer can charge for his time and effort into building a good product. While I love hearing about these success stories, lets not forget the fact that all applications are different. There is an inherit and perceived value for everything and it's all dependent on the audience. The ROI per user is different for everyone, what works for you may not work for someone else. Marco's audience is made up of mostly tech savvy individuals where the implied value is greater than the cost of the service. This isn't the exception to the rule but it isn't the typical audience that a lot of startups are trying to capture. Every audience and product is different and take inspiration with a grain of salt. With that being said nice work Marco.

&#62; On the website, this cost is defrayed by ads from The Deck, but people using the iOS app might never visit the website.<p>That's theoretically true, but how true is it? What percentage of people who have used the iOS app have also logged in via a desktop web browser? How many people have <i>only</i> logged in via a desktop web browser.<p>A look at the web server statistics would prove quite fruitful - it would tell the author where to spend development time. Do most of the active users have an iOS device? Do they ever use the mobile safari 'read later' bookmarklet? Spend time getting iOS push to push new articles to the app vs. time improving other things; but only if the data justifies it.

It's like a reverse of the iShoot story that caused everyone to run out and make free lite versions of their apps several years ago. Different market (productivity Vs. game, early app store Vs. current app store) but it's still interesting.

If it weren't for Apple's pricing restrictions, I would love to see a free version of Instapaper that is "unlocked" to a full-featured version if the linked account is a paid subscriber. (For those that don't know, Instapaper also utilizes a subscription model: <a href="http://www.instapaper.com/subscription" rel="nofollow">http://www.instapaper.com/subscription</a>)<p>I happily pay the quarterly subscription fee and would love a full-featured application to go along with it. That said, I no longer own an iOS device.

I don't think the App Store is necessarily fostering a new generation of entitlement minded people. I think those people have and will always exist no matter what. IMHO I always prefer paying for apps, and I never complain about the prices that are in the App Store. I prefer to support the hard work that goes into the quality apps that I use. I also don't feel it's fair or right for me to complain about a product when it's provided for free. I think Marco made an excellent decision.

Yes - he fails to note that the reason that most people learned about instapaper is because he offers a free version of it. I love instapaper but haven't contemplated paying for it because the differences between the free and paid versions are relatively minimal.<p>Freemium has a lot of perks, the chief one being - getting the word out about the product. How many people would know about dropbox if they didn't offer a free version?

These days I really prefer to pay a service or an app, hopefully to give it some sustainable fuel, rather than invest in a free tool that doesn't allow the author to pay its bills.

I love instapaper, but I really really want search built for it...

I like his arguments since they are logical and backed up with data. But at the same time I never would have bought the app if I didn't use "free" for several weeks and got the idea it was useful.<p>This is after reading about Instapaper everywhere and hearing from close friends that it's almost the main reason they even have an iPhone (which was probably an overstatement on their part).<p>Edit: Can we please stop the tired argument of "you paid 600$+ for the device, what difference is 5.00$..."?<p>It's like people who pay 6000$ for a HDTV don't mind paying 100$ for the HDMI cable. Some people do indeed do that, but I for one determine the value of an app or accessory based on the sunken costs of the device. I value a HDMI cable's value at about 5-10$ because that is the cost of a quality one from Monoprice.

I am sad about this since I was an Instapaper Free to Instapaper paid convert. In fact, I would never have used it if I hadn't used the free app.<p>I know I'm in a minority of users, but I still think the free is useful.<p>Having initially spent many months using my iPhone and not paying for any apps at all (only downloading free apps), I took my first step into paid apps with a cheap $0.99 app, and realized that for the small price, it made my app (and phone) experience a whole lot better. After that, I was always willing to spend money on apps (even if it was just for experimentation) and Instapaper became one of the first apps I bought.<p>I don't know if this is an unusual thing, but I've noticed a lot of my friends act in a similar manner. After paying for that first app, they are very willing to pay for more. And you'd be losing some very good customers if you removed the free app.<p>I suppose I understand Marco's decision even after all this, I'm still unhappy that we might see it go.