A couple of days ago a tire kicker (that is, someone who came to JibberJobber and checked it out for a few minutes and then left) sent us this message (the two points are in bold):
>> First thing I see is that I’m gonna have to deal with upselling.
My first reaction was “no, not really. We are really light on upselling. In fact, I’d say we are really bad at it. There’s not much to buy. You *could* “have to deal with” choosing to go premium, which is $9.95 a month, or $5/month if you do the $60 yearly price… but that’s a simple choice that we all make in life. Walk into the mall, and we could choose to buy something.
What I don’t want people to think is that they ever have to upgrade. I don’t want you to think that you are forced into an upgrade, or that there is any bait-and-switch. I remember calling a job board company in Virginia and the voicemail that greets you says, first thing, “If you want to cancel your subscription, press 1.” I couldn’t believe that the first impression of the company was “we trick so many people into subscribing that most of our phone calls are to cancel a subscription… and so we put that in front of anything else in our voice mail.” YUCK. DOUBLE YUCK.
I didn’t want to ever be “that company.”
So, what happens when you finally choose whether you are going to upgrade or not? Well, first and foremost, you don’t ever lose any of the data you put into the system. If you put in 400,000 Contacts (seriously, I have no idea where someone gets that many contacts), and you go to the free (“Regular”) level, which has a limit of 500, you still get full access to your 400,000 Contacts. You don’t have to choose the first 500, or the last 500… you get to see and use all 400,000. That is pretty cool. You don’t ever have to upgrade just because you are worried you won’t see or have access to your data.
Aside from that, you lose only three features: (1) Email2Log, (2) bulk importing, and (3) push notifications on Action Items. That is it. Everything else is in the free version of JibberJobber.
We designed it so that you can upgrade when you want those three features (and the ability to get more Contacts/Companies in, if you hit the 500/500 limit), and you can downgrade whenever you want.
AND, we give plenty of upgrade away. Every time you watch the JibberJobber User Orientation, live or recorded, you get another 7 days premium. Every time you watch one of my premium job search videos, on Pluralsight, and let us know, you get another 7 days premium. You could easily have a free upgrade all year if you want, without paying a dime.
There ain’t no bait and switch there.
>> Second thing I see is that I’ll need to spend time learning a software that I will lose the benefits of when I don’t sign up for the paid version – my time is too valuable for that.
I get that you don’t have time for training. But let me make it clear, again, that when you are not a Premium user, you really have access to almost all of JibberJobber. A couple of years ago we changed our upgrade model (lowered the price by 40%, took out a middle tier option, and moved almost all of the Premium features to the Regular account) and made the free side way, way more powerful. If you never upgrade, you still have 99% of the value of JibberJobber. That extra $5/month will get you some automation (which admittedly can save a lot of time, each day, especially with the email2log), but most of JibberJobber’s value is on the free side.
If your time is too valuable for that, I understand, and I sincerely wish you well in this period of your career. If you find that your spreadsheet or other system is just getting to messy, come on back… we’ll still be here.
So there you go. We’re not out to strong-arm anyone. We just want to provide significant value, and help you out now and during future transitions.