Forget Freemium and Premium. Meet Usermium
When you limit your products, you also limit your users.
There is an ongoing debate about Freemium and Premium business models. Which one works? Which one is the best? Which one attracts more users? Which one monetizes the best? Which one is the key to ultimate growth?
The point is that in none of these debates you will find a conclusion, the mysterious answer you have been looking for to unlock growth for your business.
Why?
Well, for one single reason.
It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.
You can easily name many companies that used the Freemium model (Dropbox, MailChimp, Slack…) and the other ones that used the Premium model that unlocked the growth key for their business with each of these models.
So, what do we see? Both of these models work and there are many companies that shared their success stories which prove this statement.
It’s always good to check other success stories but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they will work for you as well.
However, there is something else that you can extract from these success stories that can help you.
What actually leveled up these companies to this success level is definitely not a debate about which business model works best for their product. It was a totally different mantra that we will share in the upcoming lines.
Freemium vs Premium vs Usermium
What you will find here is that the discussion is going from the wrong point.
We are discussing what is the best model for our product? Do you think that these successful companies did the same? The mantra they followed from the beginning is to give their users what is best for them. While for one company freemium is what their users need, for the other premium is the top notch solution.
The question here is not which one of these models work best but rather what works best for our users?
Until a while ago we were at the same spot. We build our company on the belief that everyone should be free of malware. To put this belief in practice we created products that help in keeping users malware free.
However, even though we knew that malware has no place in your cyber journey we never knew what our users actually need and what is best for them.
We build models and products based solely on our belief and by research from other companies. That’s when we realized: what works for others doesn’t have to necessarily work for you also.
We build two versions Free and Premium of our Zemana AntiMalware and made both of them available to our users.
This is the history of our model combinations:
- Only Premium
- Premium and Free
- Bye, Bye Free. Only Premium
- ?
We tried almost all combinations but what we never did is that we never asked our users what they need and want.
Inventing Usermium
In late 2018 it hit us. We have actually no clue what our users want. Ok, they want to be safe from malware, but in which way, with which features and so on and so forth.
There are so many questions to be answered so we decided let’s get our answers to these questions.
Instead of thinking how to get money from our users we realized hey let’s see what we can give to our users.
So, basically, we rolled back the whole process and went straight to basics.
Going back to basics
Every good phenomenon gives birth to a bad phenomenon. Internet was (still is) a great invention that opened, to all of us, a totally new and exciting world with many possibilities.
As it usually goes, many possibilities don’t exclude the bad ones.
That is how the great new cyberspace led to the creation of hackers, malware creators and similar alike that utilize cyber possibilities with bad intentions.
That’s why companies like us exist. To fight the above-mentioned ones and that’s it. End of the story.
At least from our view.
…
Actually, this is just the beginning.
Our user’s view
There are certain things in life that are essentials and that should be open to everyone and everywhere. On this matter, everyone may have their own views and ideas. So, do our users.
Even though it seems so logical now but we were totally not aware of the fact that we fit in that “essentials” concept until our users told us.
And luckily they did.
Our users believe that removing malware should be free and available to everyone. So basically, if you get infected with malware you shouldn’t worry if you have money to purchase a product that can help you out.
From this moment we started building a totally new model, a model we call Usermium.
So now it’s like this:
History of our model combinations:
- Only Premium
- Premium and Free
- Bye, Bye Free. Only Premium
- Usermium
This Usermium model brought us to this point where we are now. We released a totally Free antimalware solution that gives unlimited access to everyone to remove malware.
Are we a Freemium because of that? Call it whatever you want but we choose to believe that we have a Usermium model.
Even before we had a Freemium model and Premium model but we never had a model that was totally centered our users.
Zemana AntiMalware Free (Freemium) vs Zemana AntiMalware Free (Usermium)
While the first one was built with the purpose to gain more installations in order to monetize the users at the end, this new free version is developed with a totally new purpose that is oriented towards our users where growth is not calculated in financial conversion but rather in users growth.
Here are the building blocks of our new model:
Listening to users
Reading user comments and carefully listening to user feedback is not the same thing. For two years we have been running an uninstallation survey on our website that now we see with totally different eyes than we did before.
One of the main reasons our users uninstalled our product is because they didn’t have money to pay for it. They say they want it, they need it but they don’t have the budget for it.
What we did back then? We continued on improving our Premium version.
What do we do now?
We actually listen to our users and develop a totally free version that has no back end process and is available to everyone.
Growing with users
Free your product from yourself. Open it to your users.
You are developing your product, but you will not use it and that’s why always choose not to be product oriented but rather user oriented. What does this mean?
The main purpose of this concept is not to listen to our users to monetize their journey in the end. We are not against monetization-hey we all need money to live and to run a business.
The point is that we listen not with the purpose to take from them but rather to give to them for their own good and not for ours only.
That’s why now every new feature and our whole product map is discussed with our users because this is a shared product and we are all in this together.
We grow together with our users.
So how do you know what is best for your users?
It’s always good to know and stay up today date with the latest trends and to be knowledgable about success stories from other companies. Just keep in mind when you read a success story to not follow the tactics they used but rather follow the ultimate manta that brought them to success; you will notice. It’s always oriented towards users.
Or better. Create your own mantra. Like we did.
So for the end, what is Usermium? Free choice to think more about how to give to users rather than thinking about how to take from them.
