为什么我努力为我的创业公司定价，以及我最终如何启动Tueri.io

定价可以是自举式创业公司的成败。 (Pricing can be the life or death of a bootstrapped startup.)

When I started the process of trying to price my startup I became overwhelmed with questions and doubts. Should we have usage-based or a tiered pricing model? How much storage can we offer at each tier? Should we offer a free plan? What should the base price be? What if no one wants to pay for this? What if Tueri is a failure?

当我开始尝试为初创公司定价时，我变得不知所措。 我们应该采用基于使用量还是分层定价模型？ 我们可以在每个层提供多少存储空间？ 我们应该提供免费计划吗？ 基本价格应该是多少？ 如果没有人愿意为此付费怎么办？ 如果Tueri失败了怎么办？

I have spent countless hours trying to answer these questions and pricing has been the single most daunting part of launching Tueri. Tueri is a completely bootstrapped startup and ultimately, pricing can be the life or death of it. Investor money is non-existent, meaning the company needs to be profitable at every stage of growth.

我花了无数小时试图回答这些问题，而价格一直是启动Tueri的最艰巨的部分。 Tueri是一家完全自举的创业公司，最终，价格可能是它的成败。 投资者资金不存在，这意味着公司需要在每个增长阶段都实现盈利。

It boils down to these two essential questions:

它归结为以下两个基本问题：

1. Can I provide exceptional value and service to my customers at this price?
   我可以以此价格为客户提供非凡的价值和服务吗？
2. At this price, can Tueri continue to grow and be on the leading-edge so I can continue to deliver exceptional value and service?
   以这个价格，Tueri能否继续增长并处于领先地位，以便我能够继续提供卓越的价值和服务？

These two questions may seem at odds, but they are essential for building a long-term, customer-centric company.

这两个问题看似有些矛盾，但对于建立以客户为中心的长期公司至关重要。

什么是Tueri？ (What is Tueri?)

The word Tueri is a Latin word that means: preserve. Tueri is an image management and optimization platform based on the idea of an immutable master image.

Tueri这个词是拉丁语，意思是：保存。 Tueri是一个基于不变主图像的图像管理和优化平台。

Tueri uses just-in-time image transformation, compression and conversion to deliver the perfect image to each one of your users in just milliseconds.

Tueri使用即时图像转换，压缩和转换功能，可在几毫秒内为每个用户提供完美的图像。

The idea for Tueri came during my work as an application developer. As a developer, I build customer-incentive applications for automotive parts companies. The basic premise for these sites is the more auto parts a customer (mechanic shop) buys, the more points they earn. Customers redeem points online for everything from golf clubs to TVs to vacations.

Tueri的想法来自我作为应用程序开发人员的工作。 作为开发人员，我为汽车零部件公司构建了客户激励应用程序。 这些站点的基本前提是客户(机械商店)购买的汽车零件越多，他们获得的积分就越多。 客户可以在线兑换积分，从高尔夫俱乐部到电视到度假都可以使用。

These websites receive daily file feeds from vendors with new, discontinued, and updated products. There are thousands of products and no standardization on image dimensions, file sizes or image hosting HTTP protocol. I built Tueri to solve these problems.

这些网站每天都会收到来自供应商的有关新产品，停产产品和更新产品的文件提要。 有成千上万的产品，并且在图像尺寸，文件大小或图像托管HTTP协议方面没有标准化。 我建立了Tueri来解决这些问题。

The first version of Tueri was a simple proxy server designed to fetch remote HTTP images and re-serve them over HTTPS, removing insecure-content warnings on our customer-incentive sites.

Tueri的第一个版本是一个简单的代理服务器，旨在获取远程HTTP图像并通过HTTPS重新提供它们，从而消除了我们客户激励网站上不安全内容的警告。

The next version was a simple one-page PHP script using GraphicsMagick. This script fetched a remote image, resized the image if it was over a predefined width, stored it on the server and served the image over HTTPS.

下一个版本是使用GraphicsMagick的简单的一页PHP脚本。 该脚本获取一个远程图像，如果图像超出了预定义的宽度，则将其调整大小，然后将其存储在服务器上并通过HTTPS提供该图像。

These iterations soon progressed in scope and features and somewhere along the way, I realized it was saving me obscene amounts of time.

这些迭代很快就在范围和功能上取得了进展，并且在此过程中的某个地方，我意识到这为我节省了可观的时间。

I needed to share this with other developers.

我需要与其他开发人员分享。

After a lot of work converting a personal project into something I could host for others, I was ready to launch. The only problem was, I had no idea how to price it.

经过大量工作，将个人项目转换为可以为他人托管的项目之后，我就可以开始了。 唯一的问题是，我不知道如何定价。

我们应该提供免费计划吗？ (Should we offer a free plan?)

Here are some reasons why a free plan makes sense:

以下是免费计划有意义的一些原因：

• User Acquisition — Offering a free plan can help you acquire a ton of new users. This, in turn, should drive growth through word of mouth marketing.
  用户获取-提供免费计划可以帮助您获取大量新用户。 反过来，这应该通过口碑营销来推动增长。
• Upselling — A user on the free plan can be upsold to a paid plan.
  追加销售-免费计划的用户可以追加销售为付费计划。
• Supporting the Community — In my jobs as a developer, I have relied on countless free services and have benefited greatly from the open-source community.
  支持社区—在我作为开发人员的工作中，我依赖于无数的免费服务，并从开源社区中受益匪浅。

My fear of not offering a free plan was that I would have a very hard time acquiring new users. I struggled with this question what seemed like hundreds of times, so I did some research.

我担心不提供免费计划，因为我很难获得新用户。 我在这个问题上挣扎了几百遍，所以做了一些研究。

I researched countless other startups. I wanted to know whether they offered a free plan, what features they included, what percentage of users were on it and if they were profitable.

我研究了无数其他创业公司。 我想知道他们是否提供免费计划，包含哪些功能，使用该计划的用户百分比以及他们是否有利润。

I discovered the following:

我发现以下内容：

• Free users will drive growth through word of mouth, but they will drive more free plan growth.
  免费用户将通过口口相传来推动增长，但他们将推动更多的免费计划增长。
• A free plan will help you acquire more users, but only a very small percentage of those users will ever convert to a paid plan.
  免费计划可帮助您吸引更多用户，但是这些用户中只有极少数会转换为付费计划。
• A huge percentage of support is dedicated to free users.
  很大比例的支持专用于免费用户。
• A free plan product is often inferior due to costs associated with back-end services.
  由于与后端服务相关的成本，免费计划产品通常较差。
• This inferior product is the product that people come to know your business by.
  劣等产品是人们了解您的业务的产品。

免费计划决定 (The Free Plan Decision)

I have decided not to offer a free plan in order to dedicate 100% of our resources to our paying customers. This ensures both the quality of the product and exceptional customer service.

我已决定不提供免费计划，以将我们100％的资源专用于付费客户。 这样可以确保产品质量和出色的客户服务。

我们应该采用基于使用量还是分层的定价模型？ (Should we have a usage-based or tiered pricing model?)

基于使用量的定价 (Usage-Based Pricing)

Pros:

优点：

• Only pay for what you use.
  只支付您使用的费用。
• Better for companies with seasonal usage fluctuations.
  更适合季节性使用波动的公司。
• Better for individual developers where low monthly spend is a priority.
  优先考虑低每月支出的个人开发者。

Cons:

缺点：

• Difficult to understand what your actual monthly bill will be.
  很难了解您的实际每月账单。
• Potentially drastic monthly bill fluctuations.
  潜在的每月帐单大幅波动。
• Harder for a developer to pitch to their company.
  开发人员很难向他们的公司推销。
• Customer mentality is focused on limiting usage to keep costs down, thus decreasing the perceived value of the product.
  客户心态集中在限制使用以降低成本，从而降低产品的感知价值。

分层定价 (Tiered Pricing)

Pros:

优点：

• Easy to understand your monthly bill.
  易于理解的每月账单。
• No monthly bill fluctuations.
  每月账单没有波动。
• A fixed monthly amount is an easy pitch for a developer to make to their company.
  固定的每月金额对于开发人员而言很容易向他们的公司宣传。
• Customer mentality is focused on getting the most value out of their plan, thus increasing the perceived value of the product.
  客户心态专注于从计划中获取最大价值，从而增加产品的感知价值。

Cons:

缺点：

• Harder to appeal to all use cases.
  很难吸引所有用例。
• Not as ideal for seasonal use customers.
  对于季节性使用的客户而言并不理想。
• Hard to appeal to individual developers with a minimal budget.
  以最小的预算很难吸引到各个开发人员。

I scoured hundreds of pricing pages from different Software as a Service (Saas) companies; some simple, some complex. I continually gravitated toward tiered pricing models based on the fact that they were easier to understand. Many companies with usage-based pricing dedicate an entire page to explaining how to calculate your monthly bill. Even after following the examples I still could not say for certain what they would cost me.

我从不同的软件即服务(Saas)公司搜索了数百个定价页面； 一些简单，一些复杂。 基于它们易于理解的事实，我一直偏向于分层定价模型。 许多采用基于使用情况的定价的公司都会用整页来解释如何计算您的每月账单。 即使遵循了这些示例，我仍然无法确定它们将使我付出多少。

Let's talk about an example of usage-based pricing for Tueri. Let's say its priced per image transformation. You have a simple responsive website with 10 pages and 10 images per page for a total of 100 images. You check Google Analytics for device usage: you have one desktop resolution, one laptop resolution, two tablet resolutions (portrait and landscape) and two mobile resolutions (portrait & landscape). If every image on every page gets viewed ten times by each resolution you have a total of 6,000 transformations.

让我们讨论一个基于使用率的Tueri定价示例。 假设每个图片转换的定价。 您有一个简单的响应式网站，其中包含10页和每页10张图像，总共100张图像。 您检查Google Analytics(分析)的设备使用情况：您有一个台式机分辨率，一个笔记本电脑分辨率，两个平板电脑分辨率(纵向和横向)和两个移动分辨率(纵向和横向)。 如果每个页面上的每个图像被每种分辨率查看十次，则总共有6,000个转换。

Easy right? Not exactly.

容易吧？ 不完全是。

In reality, you may have 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 or more page views a month. You could have 20+ different resolutions, HiDPI displays, pages with varying levels of views, and new images added regularly.

实际上，您每月可能有10,000、50,000、100,000或更多的页面浏览量。 您可能有20多种不同的分辨率，HiDPI显示，具有不同视图级别的页面以及定期添加的新图像。

You can see how this gets complicated.

您可以看到这变得如何复杂。

定价模型决策 (The Pricing Model Decision)

While it was not an easy decision to make, I concluded that tiered pricing was right for Tueri due to its transparency and simplicity.

尽管做出这个决定并不容易，但我得出结论，由于Tueri的透明性和简单性，分级定价是正确的。

基本价格应该是多少？ (What should the base price be?)

This has to be the single most difficult question to answer, at least it was for me. One that I will continue to ask and re-evaluate throughout the lifetime of Tueri.

这必须是最难回答的单个问题，至少对我来说是这样。 我将继续询问并重新评估Tueri的一生。

I had to assess:

我必须评估：

• Are we a premium or a value company?
  我们是优质公司还是价值公司？
• What type of users do we want to focus our service on?
  我们要专注于哪种类型的用户？
• Do we want to serve millions of customers at a low price or thousands of customers at a higher price?
  我们要以低廉的价格为数百万个客户提供服务还是以较高的价格为成千上万个客户提供服务？
• Can we continue to provide exceptional service to our customers at this price?
  我们可以继续以此价格为客户提供卓越的服务吗？
• What is the time value we are providing to our customers?
  我们为客户提供的时间价值是多少？
• What is the monetary value we are providing to our customers?
  我们为客户提供的货币价值是多少？
• What does our competition charge, are they profitable, and is their business sustainable?
  我们的竞争对手要收取什么费用，它们是否有利可图，并且业务是否可持续？

It boils down to defining priorities:

归结为定义优先级：

• I want to provide an exceptional level of service to fewer customers.
  我想为更少的客户提供卓越的服务水平。
• I am in this for the long-haul and our pricing needs to be sustainable.
  从长远来看，我是这样做的，我们的定价需要可持续。

底价决定 (The Base Price Decision)

Pricing should not be static, you should assess it over time based on feedback from customers, the added value from new features, and operating costs.

定价不应是一成不变的，您应该根据客户的反馈，新功能的附加值和运营成本，逐步评估价格。

We are constantly evaluating our pricing and I would love to know your use case and if our pricing works for you. dane.stevens@tueri.io

我们一直在评估价格， 我想知道您的用例以及我们的价格是否适合您。 dane.stevens@tueri.io

结论 (Conclusion)

I finally realized that I was never going to have it all figured out, so I made the best decisions I could with the available information and launched.

最终，我意识到我永远都想不通，因此我根据现有信息做出了最佳决策，然后启动了。

There is no definitive answer to pricing your startup, but keep these things in mind and you won't go wrong:

对初创公司定价没有明确的答案，但请记住以下几点，您不会出错：

• Exceed your customer's expectations in the service and value you provide.
  超出客户对您提供的服务和价值的期望。
• Price your business for growth.
  为业务增长定价。
• Launch your startup.
  启动您的启动。
• Reevaluate your pricing continually.
  不断重新评估您的价格。

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Do you have any tips or questions about pricing your startup? Get in touch dane.stevens@tueri.io

您对启动公司的定价有任何提示或问题吗？ 保持联系dane.stevens@tueri.io

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Originally published at Tueri.io

最初发表于Tueri.io

翻译自: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-struggle-to-price-my-startup-and-how-i-finally-launched-tueri-io/