27 Feb 2014
Support from Premier subsciptions has been good but growth has flattened. We are profitable, however if I'm to concentrate full time and even hire staff then we need a big increase in revenue.
The freemium model has had limited success. >99% of users pay nothing for an ad-free service that is maintained, supported and updated at considerable effort and cost. At the current rate of conversion, we would need 1 million users before we could employ one other full-time developer.
Advertising works well for some companies. For an IDE it does not work because smart developers block ads and know never to click them. So we will be switching to a Free Trial model. New and existing users will automatically be upgraded to a 30 day trial of Premier. When the trial period expires they can decide whether or not to continue for $6/ month.
If enough users stick around, we will be able to achieve much more in a shorter space of time.
Adam Jimenez
Founder of ShiftEdit