(2010-09-30) Mailchimp On Going Freemium

Ben from MailChimp on their decision to go Freemium last year. (They started building this app in 2001, when they were a website development house! In 2007, we officially ended all web development work as "The Rocket Science Group" and focused exclusively on MailChimp.) Throughout history, and across all the businesses he (Matt Brezina) researched, the ratio of free-to-paid-subscribers ultimately ended up at the dismal ratio of 10:1... So the question to ask yourself is whether or not your “one” is big enough to pay your bills yet. For eight years, our company never thought about freemium. We didn’t even know the concept existed. For eight loooong years, we were focused on nothing but growing profits. If you had brought up the concept of “freemium” with us during those eight years, we probably would’ve looked at you like you were eff’ing insane, then went back to work. In fact, when we launched MailChimp in 2001, we didn’t even have a Free Trial option.