This is not free to use. This is useless on free. It's like tesla saying that chargers are free to use on front page, then on pricing: but only first 0.1kWh.
Calling it a dark pattern is a bit much. Dark patterns are intentionally misleading. The free account here clearly shows the limits before you sign up.
This is a valid point. What do you think would be respectable amount of free cards? - or is having a card limit even the right way to of differentiate between free and premium?
Very interested in hearing your points - i'm totally new to this.
I think you need to make a decision and go in one of two directions:
* 25 (or maybe 50) card limit, and call it something like "Try before you buy"
* 100 (or maybe 200) card limit and call it "Free"
Basically either the free tier is usable for a reasonable period of time for a reasonable subset of your customer base, or it's a "free trial" to get people setting up and seeing the value without having to enter credit card details.
If you go with the "free trial" approach, the precise wording for what you call it will be important. I put a couple of minutes thought into trying to come up with a good suggestion and "Try before you buy" isn't too bad, but there maybe a better idea.
I have started to use Anki to memorise certain important things for flying - standard radio frequencies for instance. I have a library of around 40 cards and haven't expanded in a while.
I agree that for long term widespread usage you're going to end up with many more, but you can do something useful with 100.
I think once you talk to your potential client base, then you may see that a tool for spaced repetition is in far less demand than ready-made card stacks on specific subjects.
If it's at all possible (and it is in very many cases), the vast majority of people would rather pick up an existing stack and start learning instead of spending time on creating it from scratch. Ultimately the goal is to learn and the simpler the solution, the better it is.
That is, your target audience consists of people who are not interested in pre-made stacks or who can't find any on a subject they are interested in. Try and understand who these people are, imagine their use-cases and then see how to give them enough as a hook, but without being obviously useless out of the box.
One of the options is to not limit card counts in free, but rather offer paid features that would actually justify a monthly charge - cloud storage of their stacks, shared multi-device use, ability to share stacks with other people or to use stacks shared by others (! e.g. in school setups). This sort of thing. Monthly fees should be well justified and fair.
> Pre-made decks of cards on a range of subjects available on the web ("shared decks").
This is of very varied quality though. Some decks are made by university professors that teach a class on an advanced topic, and they are top notch. Other decks are simply wrong, and questionable. This especially applies to language learning, since people creating the decks aren't proficient yet.
That's why I loved Wanikani [1]. In the end, it is just Anki with some extra stuff, but you pay for the excellent quality of the content.
I would say 250+ and no more than 1000 should be more than enough. Usually doing 20..40 new DAILY is a max if you are doing anything bigger.
I would allow users bigger db (1000..5000) but would limit to the moment they will reveal (open) 250 new cards.
You want them to create habbit. This needs more than few weeks. Completly dont worry about them using 200 or 500, if habbit do not kickin, they will leave you no matter what you offer.
p.s. my experience come from doing 20k rep spacing english. It took me around 10 years of daily doing it.
p.p.s. I paid for my 20k english course, 15 USD. that was for the app, complete 20k cards with phrases and VOICE audio. Mind it. 15 usd. Your tool would cost 10yrs125 whooping 6000 usd :)
Thanks for insight, i'll definitely use it! It is a valid point about your English course but myself I don't use SRS for language learning I use it for mathematics, cs, and economics, so that was why I implemented latex and codeblocks. But I think some sort of predefined/shareable deck solution could solve this problem.
I think your math is off by a factor of ten: $5/month * 12 months/year * 10 years = $600, not $6,000. I do agree with the general point, though, it seems like education is a really tough market to monetize as people are very price-sensitive.
This is not free to use. This is useless on free. It's like tesla saying that chargers are free to use on front page, then on pricing: but only first 0.1kWh.
this is dark pattern.