The Starter Plan Gets Even Better

We’ve never done what other companies do. We choose our own path, pick our mission, and execute it our own way. In a world where there have been more price increases than ever before and more attempts to screw customers every which way, we wanted to do the opposite. 

So, we’ve taken our smallest plan and made it 10X better.

Some people on our Starter plan get a sending limit of 5 documents per month, others get 10 if they signed up before a few years ago. Today, we’ve made the decision to increase that limit to 50 per month.

Why did we 10X our smallest plan?

The realisation came after I conducted 100 customer research calls in 20 days. There’s “talking to customers”, and then there’s doing 11 calls a day in some cases. I learned more in those weeks than I had in the last few years. 

One of the things I discovered was that customers on the Starter plan very often said they would send proposals through Better Proposals sometimes and other times they’d do it their old way. When I’d press for why, it was usually because they’d go over the limit if they did, so they just sent their most important proposals through Better Proposals.

While it made sense, I didn’t like the idea of this. And over the years we’ve made it so that you can send almost any type of document you like, from contracts, online brochures, statements of work, job offers, etc. I wanted more of our customers to be able to benefit from this. 

The 5 document limit on the Starter plan just wasn’t going to cut it, so we increased it to 50. 

That wasn’t the only realisation

It turned out, when I’d press for annoyances or comments from the people I spoke to, something that came up more than I’d imagined: our customers' recipients not knowing what they’d been sent. Now, when you’re sending a proposal, there’s usually a conversation that’s happened and you’re saying “Sure I’ll send you the proposal on Friday”.

Then a proposal shows up on Friday and everything makes sense. 

But what if you’re sending a brochure, or a partnership proposal where perhaps it’s a little less by request? Not necessarily a cold email, but just not primed with a conversation. 

In the world of phishing, scams, and things of that nature, people are more concerned than ever about opening things via links and attachments they’re not sure of.

So what we found was that people would often try and copy the betterproposals.io portion from the proposal link to try and work out what it was. When the link takes them to our homepage, it might not be immediately obvious what they’ve been sent, depending on what our messaging is at the time.

So, to control this situation more directly, we decided to re-include a tiny badge which used to be on the document and cover that at some point was removed but remained on the email and the “thank you” page. It’s discrete, in the corner, and doesn’t interfere with your document’s design or its purpose. But it means if someone isn’t sure what they’ve been sent, they can click a link and be taken to a page that explains the context far clearer.

Want the completely unbranded look?

Good - you absolutely should. It’s our view that the most professional option is to remove our badge and set up your custom domain so it’s your website in the URL, not ours. Then it’s a nice, consistent look.

Upgrade to Premium which is $10 more per month, set your custom domain up, remove the badge, and benefit from tons of additional features in the process. If you’re reading this and you’re on Premium or Enterprise, then get your Custom Domain set up.

Our hope is that this removes the confusion for those recipients, allows our Starter plan customers to send more, and gives everyone more value for money at a time where everyone seems to be doing the opposite.

There’s so much more to come from us the next few months. 

Strap in!

Adam