> Free forever for teams up to 5. Unlimited search, unlimited history.
I understand the strategic value of offering unlimited features to differentiate from competitors like Slack, might drive some amount of anxiety. Buyers may question long-term sustainability or fear undisclosed "shadow" caps.
Since engineering limits are inevitable to prevent abuse (especially on free accounts), it might be better to set specific, generous expectations upfront. For example, 2 years of freeform search plus unlimited "tagged" (i.e. Decision Inbox) search. This avoids the skepticism that comes with promising "no limits" forever. It also avoids the trap of needing to announce a change later with predictably negative reactions.
If you do want to offer unlimited, then planning ahead with hard-to-hit-unless-you're-trying messages/hr limits might help you tame growth and avoid abuse. My initial thought when seeing unlimited anything is "I could write a filesystem on top of that" - especially if you allow attachments. :P
Great point. We’re launching with a clear Fair Usage Policy to address exactly that—preventing abuse (like the "filesystem" hack) while keeping it truly unlimited for actual team communication. Our cost structure is different than legacy players; because we’re built on Cloudflare + our custom CRDT-hybrid store, the overhead for storing and searching text is low enough that we can avoid those arbitrary 90-day or 2-year cutoffs without it being a sustainability risk. We’ll be publishing our explicit "human use" guidelines on the site soon so there’s no "shadow" cap anxiety for legitimate teams.
Just sell extra storage at reasonable price. That's the most transparent system you can get.
Some users will never hit more than few GBs as it will be near only text. Other people will share 100MB video clips daily or use it as easy way to transfer files betweeen users in company
Maybe have option to expire attachements at separate timer or ability to set a cap where oldest files get removed if it is passed for cost-control-concious companies
Your costs will change and shift over time. Personally, I don't trust anything that says "Free Forever" or "Unlimited". Give a real limit and figure out the transition. "Free now, and no plans to change, but if it does, we will give you one year to transition" is much more confidence building then "Free forever".
Gmail has been free forever :) even when google wasn't the behemoth it is now
Most people say their number one complaint is limited history. But then you offer that, and they realize it was not such a big deal. Slack still wins on so many levels that I don't see anyone willing to move any time soon.