Day 428: You wouldn't subscribe to a hammer

sales

Shiva made a suggestion the other day about making Browserflow a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, and I instinctively recoiled because in the indie maker world, the name of the game is recurring revenue. A stable and predictable source of income from charging existing users is strongly preferable to always seeking new users in order to generate revenue.

But if most people end up using Browserflow for one-off tasks (e.g. scraping) rather than as a regular part of their workflow, they’ll balk at the idea of paying for a subscription. In the words of the great sage Shiva: “You wouldn’t subscribe to a hammer.”

So let’s explore some alternatives.

What do other products with similar characteristics (operates locally and on-demand) do?

[Alfred](https://www.alfredapp.com/shop/) (Application launcher + more): One-time fee

[Sublime Text](https://www.sublimehq.com/store/text) (Text editor): One-time fee for individuals (3 years of updates), recurring fee for businesses

[TextExpander](https://textexpander.com/pricing/) (Text snippets manager): Recurring fee

[Tower](https://www.git-tower.com/) (Git client): Recurring fee

[Sketch](https://www.sketch.com/pricing/) (Graphics editor): One-time fee for individuals (1 year of updates), recurring fee for teams

[Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/pricing) (Note-taking app): Free for personal use, recurring fee for add-on services (syncing, publishing), recurring fee for commercial use

One model I found in the research above that I hadn’t considered before is the “charge individuals a one-time fee but businesses a recurring fee” approach. This seems great for spurring adoption (since people are much more likely to pay for a tool once rather than a subscription) while also charging for the value that’s being provided to businesses.

The Obsidian model of making it completely free for personal use is quite interesting. I’ve had several friends rave about Obsidian, and I think having the core offering be free helps with their adoption a ton.

The challenge with doing that for Browserflow is that there are some costs associated with every user due to hosting their data. While I could create a separate tier where flows are only available locally and not synced, it would make the product quite a bit more complicated and would make it harder to share flows, which I want to encourage to make the tool more valuable for everyone. Unlike a note-taking app where you generate all of your own content, Browserflow becomes more useful the more people share their work.

I’m currently drawn to the idea of having the following setup:

  • Free tier: Limited to storing 1 flow

    • Honestly, given that many use cases are one-off, allowing one flow would get people pretty far and allow them to try out all the functionality in the extension

  • One-time payment for personal use: Unlimited flows

  • Recurring payment for commercial use

Somewhat related thought: I think I want to spend most of this year learning about distribution, marketing, pricing, and all the other aspects of creating a business outside of writing code

Step 1: Launch Browserflow

Step 2: Finally add a paid plan for Intention?

Step 3: ???

Step 4: PROFIT

Step 5: Do another 3-month meditation retreat