Services organisations have been burned. Too many six-figure CRM implementations that promised transformation and delivered a very expensive replica of the spreadsheet they were using before. Too many 'enterprise platforms' that turned out to need a part-time admin just to keep the automations alive.
By the time I meet with a prospective client, they've likely been mislead by at least a couple of vendors. Trust is not something I can argue into existence in 30 minutes. A deck, a case study or a demo won't do it - demos are a controlled environment where things rarely go wrong.
So we offer a free tier. Three seats, three clients, six projects, with access to every core module. No trial timer, no need for a credit card, just a real product you can run a real piece of your business on, for free, for as long as you want.
This is a deliberate yet unusual decision at this end of the B2B SaaS market. Most investors and advisors will tell you free tiers attract low-intent users, clog your support queues, and train people to see the product as worthless. There's a basis of truth in some of that, but it's still the right call for this category, for three reasons.
𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻'𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘆 𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮. The core value of Avaro-One™ is that all modules share an engagement record. The way that feels - quote becomes project becomes timesheet becomes invoice - is a fundamental experience. I can tell you about it. You won't believe it until you've lived inside the product for a few days.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. A vendor that's certain their product provides genuine value has no reason to hide it behind a paywall for evaluation. Offering the free tier signals confidence, we accept that the signal only works if the product survives the scrutiny.
𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲-𝘀𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗶𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘁. A free tier that offers unlimited use trains users to never pay. A free tier that tops out at three seats, three clients and six projects is viable for evaluation & genuine small-scale use, but it makes the economics of stay free forever tight enough that serious businesses upgrade when they need to.
I can't predict whether the free tier will pay back in conversion rates, but what I can say is that organisations that move from free to paid do so because the product has already proved itself in their actual workflow.
That's the best kind of conversion. An organisation that upgrades because a renewal conversation with a client went better, because their utilisation is suddenly visible, because a renewal got caught by a smart reminder - those organisations become the best advocates, because they bought a result rather than a promise.
You can't argue someone into trusting your product, you should simply let them use it.
Try before you trust. Register for a free Avaro-One™ account : Avaro-One
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