Free is not a price, it is a distribution strategy
Yesterday I was the guest on WP Product Talk with Matt Cromwell and Zack Katz, talking about the bet behind Milo: monetizing a free plugin without holding any feature hostage. If you read my previous post, this is the live, unscripted version of that argument, with two hosts who have actually run both models and pushed back where it deserved pushback.
Here is the full episode:
A podcast hour goes by fast, so here are the ideas from the conversation I most want to keep, in writing.
Free is not a price
The line I keep coming back to: free is not a price, it is a distribution strategy. When people tell me I am leaving money on the table, my answer is that I am leaving it in my customers' pockets, and they will spend it with me later. Milo starts from zero users against a competitor with twelve years of history; a free core is not generosity, it is the only serious way to fill the top of the funnel.
Partners, not customers
Milo earns a transparent one percent on payments, the same direction WooCommerce took with WooPayments. I saw that switch from the inside: when Woo moved from selling a Stripe license to earning on transactions, everything changed. Ask anyone on the WooCommerce team what the inflection point was, and that is the answer.
The deeper reason I love this model is the relationship it creates. A store that sells subscriptions with Milo is not a customer I invoice once a year; it is a partner whose success is literally my revenue. When I joined WooThemes, the goal everyone felt was to help people make a living with WooCommerce. As the company scaled, the goal quietly became making money for the company. With Milo I get to feel the original version again: if our users make a living, we make a living. Same side of the table.
No hostages
I did support for WooCommerce Subscriptions for years, so I knew every pain point, and we built Milo against that list. But the principle I care most about is portability, in both directions. You can migrate from any major subscriptions plugin to Milo in one click, without losing data or gateway tokens. And if after three months you do not like Milo, you click a button and you are back on your previous setup, data intact.
Zack made the strategic point better than I did: when your revenue is a small slice of every transaction, you need volume, and volume means migration in AND migration out must both be painless. Nobody signs up for a system they cannot leave. Keeping the exit door open is not naive, it is what makes people comfortable walking in.
However...
Zack also asked the hardest question of the episode: how would you monetize a free plugin if you were NOT sitting next to the payment flow? I said it on air and I will repeat it here: I do not have a good answer. Milo's model works because subscriptions are money in motion and we could partner with Stripe, PayPal, Mollie and Square. Matt's framing is the right takeaway for everyone else: whatever problem your plugin solves, move it as close as you can to the way your customers generate revenue. The products at risk in the AI era are the ones far from the money.
Where this is going
Two things I shared on the show about what is next. First, the add-ons: Milo has 42 today, sold individually or as a bundle, and the long-term plan is to keep moving revenue toward the payments side until, one day, the add-ons can be free too. Second, the marketplace opens to third-party developers in a few months, so anyone will be able to build and sell Milo extensions. An ecosystem where other people make money is the only kind I have ever seen win.
The three pieces of advice
We closed the episode the way the show always closes, with one piece of advice each:
- Mine: build the widest audience you can, and treat migration paths as a growth channel, because the users you want already run a competitor's plugin today.
- Zack's: know your costs and how long you can afford to stay free while that audience builds. Do not pick a pricing structure blindly.
- Matt's: talk to your customers before betting the model. Some of them would rather pay a flat license than a fee, and you want to learn that before you ship.
Thanks Matt and Zack for the invitation and for the pushback. If this topic is your daily life, the WP Product Talk archives are full of it. And if you sell subscriptions on WordPress, the engine is free: try Milo, and keep your two hundred dollars.