Best of the ISP-Lists

The Value of Free

Members of the ISP-Marketing list discuss whether it's best to charge incremental prices for services such as spam filters, or whether to provide them for free in order to increase customer satisfaction.

[June 5, 2001]

On the ISP-Marketing list in May, FD queried,

"We were thinking of charging clients for running their email through a filter for spam. Do any of you charge for that, or do you do it for free?"

Respondents were unanimous in recommending filtering for free:

[VW noted] "We do it for free, considering it good customer service!"

[TC added] "You will probably get more mileage from customer satisfaction and appreciation than you will from the dollars you might charge for it. You may want to also consider having an online help center (if you don't already) and add screens to it (and maybe the welcome manual you give them) showing your customer how to set the message rules in Outlook Express and other email programs to block other things they may not want to see."

[KM agreed] "Consider it your 'value add,' not to mention your competitive advantage over the guy down the street."

Others warned that charging for it could cause problems:

[BL observed] "If you charged for it, you would get complaints every time something got through. There was a very good article in the Wall Street Journal recently regarding how MSN and others try to block spam. They win some battles, but they're still losing the war."

[RL agreed] "If you charge for filtering, you're just looking for a lot of complaints."

— End