The blog of Freckle (later Noko), a time-tracking app for freelancers, with posts on client work, payments, and shipping software.
HN commenters praise the Freckle app itself as beautiful and well designed, using it as a benchmark for competing time trackers.
At my last startup we used PayPal exclusively. Why? Because we're in the UK and all our customers were in the US. This was less than ideal but worked surprisingly well - the money certainly came in and we only had a handful of "we won't use PayPal" comments from customers.
More generally, I've seen startups using authorize.net a lot recently - for example: http://letsfreckle.com/ - so they must have options for fresh startups.
I'd be interested to see any recommendations for the UK though. I'm planning to launch something in 2009 and will be using PayPal again unless I can find a better option. I'd rather have a more slick sales process, but the alternatives I've seen that can get me up and running fast in the UK for selling to US customers haven't been that great :-(
So she doesn't have to stan herself out, I will.
(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stan)
Lately...
She's a Javascript/ front-end developer (co-creator of Twistori + everytimezone for example), business thought leader type (did i just say "thought leader?" Sorry.), and co-founder of the SaaS service http://letsfreckle.com. But none of those things would get much as much attention as they do if it weren't for the fact that she is an amazing user experience/ interface maker. These skills make the things she works on (from books to slides to web form interactions) really friendly and fun.
(I have no professional affiliation with her. But full disclosure: We are Twitter friends. #realtalk)
I agree with everything you say. It is the usual best practices with this type of pricing model.
Let's just compare these two services and the somewhat different take they have between the tiers of pricing.
http://www.chompstack.com/pricing/
-only differentiation is if you need 11 restaurant. The upsell is only $15.
http://letsfreckle.com/plans/
-Freckle obviously plays better with the "idiot package" by upselling 10 more accounts instead of 1 restaurant like chompstack
They both had different pricing strategies I see when sorting through the tiers:
-Chompstack just went up $15 each tier
-Freckle doubled each time instead of sticking with a fixed rate
Any feedback on those thoughts?
If you ask me, it's bad to advertise that you publicly speculate, with resounding authority, on things you know absolutely nothing about.
Haha, won't get funded ever? I have VCs knocking on my inbox doors on a monthly basis. We don't take funding. We have, however, brought in >$1 million in revenue on products since we started doing products, including http://letsfreckle.com.
The sysadmin I mentioned is one of the most respected experts in the community. He wasn't cheap. He had a fantastic legacy of very good, very public work. And yet, here we are.
When you run a real business, you will be faced with tough decisions. Hopefully you will be able to make wise choices as well.
I like the idea of the product and your pricing is fine. But you just have to figure out a way to hit your target market. In this case, your target market is probably freelance developers.
I know that I've evaluated http://letsfreckle.com/ and other similar options in the past. Their copy appeals to me and it easily lets me know what it is they do and how it is valuable to me. But it isn't what I was looking for.
If you can explain yourself similarly, I suspect you'll have success.
Just a recommendation: You should tell me why I'd want to your application instead of something like Freckle (http://letsfreckle.com, what I'm currently using). Freckle's design is gorgeous, the workflow and UX is retarded good (including the popup tracker) and multiple project handling is awesome. It's also cheaper. I think a small section with text including an answer to "Why is this better than X?" goes a long way to increment the signup rate.