Jasper user review
I was excited to review Jasper as part of my project to document user experience with commercial consumer and business A.I. products.
The first thing I noticed is the similarities to the WriteSonic landing page – has one ripped off the other?
Or is it equally likely, the same tech company is operating with two different brandings, offering two different front-ends.
WriteSonic landing page :
There is significantly different pricing models between WriteSonic and Jasper – Jasper minimum price is far higher and there is no free trial.
Well, that’s not true!
There is a 5 day free trial available but only if you provide your credit card details.
I have a philosophical resistance to providing my credit card details to access services for trial – its been sales tactic that has been used illegitimately in the past – and sets a headache to cancel billing for troublesome/scamm/ or non-compliant vendors.
That’s probably not the case here – the payment processing company is stripe which have ok standards but my resistance remains.
I honestly don’t get Jaspers’ approach here – the AI writing space is new, but already crowded and competitive and compared to their competitors their offering is a ) more expensive and b) requires credit card to sign up.
Definitely, a different (and I believe self-defeating) approach as it puts necessary barriers to sales in front of consumers.
The SaaS market has shown time and again that active users are more important (notion, atlassian etc etc), attracting high valuations, high-quality vc investors, and the best pathway to a profitability flywheel.
Perhaps the thinking is that the approach to new client acquisition will lead to lower signups and sales, but lead to higher conversion rates? Or equally likely, if they are one organization double-branding with WriteSonic, they are A/B testing new business onboarding practices.
Either way, I will do what I believe most new users will do – simply not take up the free trial, and not provide credit card details, and move on to any number of competitors to trial, and give my money to them!
My review, unfortunately, stops there.
Credit card requirement for 5 day free trial
My conclusion
Disappointed!
Yes, I may be being a big baby because I do not wanting to share credit card to access to test out a product. Most disappointed as I will miss out the opportunity to evaluate their product, and writing output quality, which is part of the fun for me.
But I also believe that business practices are part of the evaluation – and a big majority of first time users will view the requirement similarly, and simply go elsewhere.
I will check back in on the Jasper Account periodically to see if they change this policy, and following them on twitter at @Jasper.app . If Jasper does change their sign-up practices I’ll immediately review!
Pricing
Software as a service pricing, so its a monthly fee (discount for annual), with price scaling with user volume.
Starting a free trial is the way to go – but requires providing a credit card, then its $49 a month minimum.
