ForumsNewsCutting back on free support tickets
Cutting back on free support tickets
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
We are very fortunate that Toodledo has been increasing in popularity at an accelerating rate. Thank you to everyone who has trusted Toodledo with their to-do list. We have some great things planned for the future.
One of the downsides to being so popular is that we are being deluged with questions and feature requests. To give you an example of our exponential growth: We announced our forums a little over a year ago. For the first few months we were getting 1-3 new messages posted per day. Yesterday we had 55 new messages posted. A twenty fold increase in forum participation in about a year. We have seen the same type of growth in emails and support tickets coming in to us. We currently spend over 50% of our time communicating with our customers. We enjoy talking with our customers, but as we continue to grow this will obviously become more and more unsustainable. We need to have some time to implement all the feature requests that people are sending in :) It pains us to do this, because we pride ourselves on our support, but we have to put some restrictions in place to protect our own personally productivity. Today we are placing a cap on support tickets for people using our service for free. If you are a free user, you can create 2 support tickets, which will allow you to get one-on-one help about your particular issue. If you exhaust your 2 free support tickets, and need more help, you will need to purchase one of our subscriptions. All subscribers will continue to have unlimited support. We know that this may not please people, but we still think that we are unique in providing free personal support to all of our users. Please continue to use our FAQ and Forums for additional support options. |
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Alan |
Given that most companies provide no support to non-registered/free users, I feel this is a fair policy AND will encourage users to take out a subscription as well.
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frossie |
Given how reasonable the Pro subscription rate is, I think that is fair.
I am willing to guess some of those support tickets could be dealt by asking a question on the forum. |
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Andrew |
I say yay to this. I really like the support, but what makes it even better are the constant improvements. I realize that improvements will being support tickets though.
Perhaps in order to cut down on the number of tickets you get, you could make it more obvious where to go for news + help. Even though it is on the toolbar, not many people check it every day. Nor the forums, unless they subscribe. You should have a announcement area in the main interface where you have a link to the news forum post, where you would then do the usual. Make a video if you have to. I bet it would cut down on the support requests. |
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Proximo |
I think it's a great move.
I believe that anyone who uses a free service and enjoys what it does for them, should purchase a paid subscription in order to support the app. Toodledo is priced much better than any other to do list and provides more features. Support Toodledo development and purchase a subscription. my opinion only. :-) NO - I do not work for Toodledo |
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Allen |
I believe that anyone who uses a free service and enjoys what it does for them, should purchase a paid subscription in order to support the app. It is very nice that you choose to treat a free service as a free trial with compulsory payment, but to say anyone who uses a free service *should* purchase a paid subscription is going a bit far. It is, after all, offered as a free service so we should be able to assume that it can support free users. If they *need* the paid version of the service, then they should expect to pay to upgrade. But this is a whole other conversation . . . :) I think putting a limit on free one-on-one support is a good move. Less time dealing with free support means more time for development--toodledo's value to end users increases all around. |
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Jason |
Perfectly reasonable; good idea.
Especially since there's still forums where people can voice opinions but where you guys have assistance in getting things answered. I've also had luck with Uservoice in collecting a lot of feedback with minimal management. Article about that: http://bit.ly/2XbB9z Our Uservoice site: http://feedback.codecollab.com |
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Anders |
Yes I have also thought about suggesting Uservoice to Toodledo for suggestion management. Both WebIS (pocket informant people) and PockeTwit (WM twitter app I use) use the service, and I like it. One nice thing about Toodledo however is tbhat every thin, including the forums, is on the same site, and Toodledo may not want to change that.
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Proximo |
@Allen,
I use a lot of open source software and I choose to Donate because I want to support the developers for making a great FREE application that I benefit from. Many of the free services are put out there with the hopes of capturing your attention and earning your support for the paid versions. Toodledo is so generous with the limitations to the free service that many people stick with it and that's fine. I just think people that use the service every day and find value in it, should eventually support it. It's only my opinion. Not that anyone else has to agree with it. |
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javierplumey |
I agree with all these comments and feel that the support arrangement is more than fair.
Bottom line: if Toodledo saves you time and money and makes you more productive, then it has value for you. Anyone who is not willing to pay less than two dollars a month for more productivity and an improved work flow is just being cheap and looking for a free meal. Open source software is completely different than Toodledo because you return the value that the software gives by contributing to the development. If Toodledo has improved your life then you should support it. |
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mannr |
Your service has been great
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keef |
Posted by javierplumey:
Open source software is completely different than Toodledo because you return the value that the software gives by contributing to the development. If Toodledo has improved your life then you should support it. Yes, support for free software is a very good thing! keef |
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Allen |
I agree with your sentiment, I just felt "Should" to be a rather strong term to use. To me, asserting it should be compulsory goes against the nature of voluntary support. I'm just being annoyingly nit-picky, though.
This message was edited Jul 27, 2009. |
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dan.julian |
@Toodledo:
I'm happy about this. The more free you are to do what you do best, the better it will be for all of us, free or paid users. Though I will say that additional support is not the only reason to upgrade--I'm loving the subtasks. ++Keep Doing++ |
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IceHeartX |
toodledo I think that's an absolutely fair response - you offer a massive amount of functionality for free and people can help like 90% of issues in the forums that don't deal with transaction data or account problems.
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MikeKDidIt |
Perfectly reasonable
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