Monetizing SaaS: Is there a free lunch?
eXpresso was recently written about in TechCrunch. It was a brief article – just three paragraphs – but well-balanced. A few of the follow-up comments questioned our intent to have a premium (nominal fee) business service in addition to our “free” version. Some of the comments went something like this: “Why pay for it when Google and other spreadsheets are free?”
In a way, I can understand that kind of response. If the only thing you knew about eXpresso came from those three paragraphs, you might not realize the difference between a Google and eXpresso. 
There are many industry publications that have written comprehensive reviews explaining why the 10,000 or so largest corporations in the world will continue with Excel (and eXpresso) and probably not elect to track trillions of dollars through a simpler generic spreadsheet. So let’s just address the general concept of “free” versus “pay” in the world of the Web.
Our mothers told us at a very early age that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is. There is no such thing as a free lunch!
Just like the conventional software providers, those of us delivering a service on the Web have expenses. Writing code, buying servers, maintaining databases, and employing people are just part of what it takes to run any business – and it’s costly.
There are several ways to raise enough revenue to stay afloat. One is to collect a nominal fee; another is to charge advertisers for showing their wares to “viewers” like you. eXpresso is a Business Application Community featuring Excel. Our small (future) fee will be paid by very willing businesses as we promise not to clutter their work space with ads.
Sites that are more casually visited (e.g., blogs, hobbies) or are consumer-oriented (Google, YouTube, MySpace, et al) can finance their operations with ads. We think if that model works for them and their users, then that’s great and we’re happy for everyone. Google is valued at more than $190 billion. That’s more than the GDP of Libya,
If there is such thing as a “spreadsheet hobbyist”, they’ll have free access to a version of eXpresso that is more sophisticated than anything else on the Web. But eXpresso is a world-class business tool and will have more horsepower than those whose main concern is $10 will likely need.
Maybe the best analogy is found in our television habits. When we want more sophistication and choice, we subscribe to cable TV for a fee. If watching commercial-less episodes of the Sopranos is important to us, we spring the extra bucks for HBO. But when we’re content sitting through eight minutes of commercials every half hour, then free broadcast TV suits us just fine. Just remember, whether we choose apples or we choose oranges, neither is served as a free lunch.
I have a question - since you are using OWC, do you have a separate licensing arrangement with Microsoft to let your users access OWC over the public internet? As far as I know, the licensing terms for OWC specifically forbids usage/access beyond the company intranet and you are definitely violating that by allowing any user to access the spreadsheet…