What was a free landing page is now at least $9 per month.
Here’s the announcement we received today from LanderApp:
Important News
Your account has been upgraded for free!
Here at Lander we’re introducing a new Free Trial mode and we’re giving all of our amazing current users like you a special 60-day extended free trial of our new Starter Plan (a new subscription at $9 a month).
You’ll still have your 500 monthly visitors plus 1 custom domain for free until the 60 day trial expires. Your new Starter Plan will go into effect on March 11 and we’ll offer you 2 full months for free after your next renewal date to try it out.
We’re always trying out new ways to help you get the absolute best out of your Lander experience. Learn more about the new trial mode and the benefits of your extended Free Trial or contact our Support Team anytime.
Glad we hadn’t sunk any real resources into Lander. We have a couple of landing pages we created using LanderApp.com. They were free, so even though we know WordPress really, really well, we decided some months ago to use Lander for a couple of one-page websites. I’ve always looked at that decision as temporary anyway, so it’s no huge deal that now we have to pay or quit.
LanderApp’s surprise announcement today
We just received an announcement today that we “are upgraded for free” for 60 days to the paid LanderApp plan, after which we’ll have to start paying. So what this means is that we have 60 days to rebuild our simple landing pages over on one of our WordPress sites (or create a new WordPress install). It also means we’ll be canceling our Lander account.
We understand that they have to make money, but to make it sound like they’re doing us a favor by starting to charge us in 60 days (instead of 30 for their free trial) for what has been free for the past several months is kind of bothersome. Seems like the ‘ol switcheroo. I prefer the freemium model where once they need to start charging to pay the bills that they grandfather in the old accounts for free (even if it means some feature downgrade), giving us existing customers the option to upgrade, and then charge the newcomers full rate. Oh, well.
Hello Jeff,
My name is Eric…account manager for lander….thanks for the write up and also for testing out Landerapp.
Jeff since we launched Lander over two years ago, we’ve dedicated alot of hardwork, time and resources into trying to develop the best landing page platform with the friendliest UX that we can for our users. It’s a natural part of the maturation process for a software platform like ours to change to a “30 day free trial” mode after a few years of being established in the niche.
Here’s essentially what’s going on:
What we’ve done is we’ve transferred all previous free plan users to our new “Starter” plan. This means that all accounts that were created “before” we launched this new business model, whether idle or active, will actually have any days left between now and their account renewal date “plus” another 60 days beyond that to continue for free. They’ll still have their 500 monthly visitors limit and be able to publish their landing pages. However, as an added plus now with this new starter plan, they’ll be able to use at least “one” custom domain to brand their landing pages url’s and create unique ones and launch adwords campaigns etc.
Just for clarity: Today is the 11th of March and let’s say that a particular users account renews on the 3rd of each month. This means that this user will have between today and April 3rd for free “PLUS” 60 more days beyond that as well before they would have to decide to upgrade or go into “read only mode”. However, anyone who creates an account with us from today onwards will only get 30 days on the “starter” plan or any plan they choose to start with…..make sense?
So if any of these users make it to the end of their 60 day free trial, they’ll have to choose to continue on the new discounted “Starter” plan ($9/monthly, 500 visits, one custom domain) or upgrade to any one of the larger plans. If they don’t, their account will go into “read only” mode. This means that they’ll still have access to the account, edit landing pages and create new ones, but not be able to publish them live unless they upgrade.
I hope this clarifies everything. If anyone reads this and has “any” questions, please email me back at epfeiffer@landerapp.com or call me at 1-855-780-6050 and I’ll be glad to help.
Thanks Jeff!
Eric, thanks for responding so quickly, and for the clarification.
Having a “read only” mode will definitely help and buy us some time to figure out next steps.
Thanks again.
~Jeff
P.S. – You found this article in about 24 hours, so I’m guessing maybe it was a Twitter search, or some social media awareness tool? Just curious, and amazed.
Yeah I think the guys saw this through twitter. Either way we appreciate the honest insight. We’ve put alot of thought and resources and planning into coming to this decision and I just want to invight anyone that has any questions about Lander or any of these changes to feel free to email me or call.
Thanks again!
Jeff,
I don’t want to hog up the comment section but you or your readers can also click on this link to our blog and find out more information on all of the changes:
https://blog.landerapp.com/introducing-you-to-our-new-30-day-free-trial-mode/
no worries, valid comments are always welcome