In November 2008 we turned off the free GoPC trial service after the Global Financial Crisis occured. Silicon Valley Vcnture Capitalists had done a complete 180 degree about-face and were only being interested in revenue business models, not growth models.
With the release of the new system last month and a re-focus of our marketing towards small and medium size business enterprises (SMB or SME) we are introducing a new Freemium business model. Freemium, standing for Free and Premium, gives a new customer access to a free trial of a limited service and allows an upgrade of storage, applications to build out a complete network. We are convinced it is important to build trust with customers first and there’s no more better way than actually let the customer use it first.
The Freemium release will give full access to the standard desktop account and appstore. Users will have the option to upgrade their storage at a cost to derive more value from the system and then extend this to build out a full network of user accounts, desktops, storage, security groups, etc. The fully paid service, in comparison to competitors, represents about 90% cost saving.