By
Keyvan Nayyeri
Last week we announced our first user survey that let our clients decide for the future of Waegis and our services. Waegis Survey #1 targeted three areas:
- General community opinions about spam filtering methods
- Some statistical research about sites
- Commercial model of Waegis and how to define our accounting system and pricing
We believe that the future of Waegis is tight to our collaborations with our clients on Waegis community and have a serious passion to use such surveys in order to keep ourselves on the right track.
When announcing this first survey, we also promised to publish the final results to let everyone knows what people think about such questions. There is no doubt that these results have a huge impact on our future decisions and we also want to keep these results as an evidence of our future strategies.
So here come a short outline of the results of Waegis Survey #1.
Which Spam Filter Method Do You Prefer?
Our first question targeted a general question that can guide us about our clients. It’s very important to know the answer to this question.
- An effective online spam filter service: 66.7%
- A local spam filter tool: 16.7%
- CAPTCHA control: 0%
- A combination: 16.7%
- None: 0%
As you see, most of people do like to use an online spam filter service and no one likes to use a CAPTCHA control.
What's Your Opinion About CAPTCHA Controls?
Our second question was about CAPTHCA controls because we think that they can be a stop point for using our service by webmasters and site owners. We anticipated that there are many webmasters who choose the easiest way and simply use a CAPTCHA control and do not think about its downsides. We still have this opinion but your answers have changed it slightly.
- They are the best anti-spam tool: 0%
- They are not user friendly: %100
- They can be broken: 0%
- What is CAPTCHA?: 0%
Now at least we know that no one disagrees with the accessibility issues of CAPTCHA controls.
Have You Had Any Experience With Online Spam Filter Services?
It was important for us to know if our clients know the workflow of an online service and if they know about its quality effect to be able to compare our quality with our competitors?
- Yes: 66.7%
- No: 33.3%
- What is that?: 0%
Generally that is good to know that most of users have had some experience with online services but numbers prove that we need to simplify everything as much as possible and provide enough documentation and help information for clients.
Which Type of Site Do You Have?
Your answers to this question could help us in two ways. Firstly it could help us with development and configuration of our spam rules because they can vary based on content type. Secondly it could help us with our accounting system because we can find out what’s the regular content type of our clients.
- Blog: 100%
- Forum: 33.3%
- Wiki: 0%
- Photo gallery: 0%
- Email Service: 0%
- Others: 16.7%
The interesting point of our results was that all of our clients have a blog and it shows the importance of our quality for blogs.
How Many Items Do You Get Per Month (Spam & Legitimate)?
This was just a question related to our accounting system concerns. We needed an initial understanding of the main parameter that plays a role in our account types.
- Less than 1000: 66.7%
- 1000-5000: 16.7%
- 5000-20000: 16.7%
- 20000-50000: 0%
- Over 50000: 0%
As you see, most of users need less than 1000 API calls per months.
How Many Spams Do You Get Per Month?
We asked this in order to find out some facts about our spam rules development and configuration.
- Less than 1000: 50.0%
- 1000-5000: 33.3%
- 5000-20000: 16.7%
- 20000-50000: 0%
- Over 50000: 0%
Half of users receive less than 1000 spams per months and most of them receive less than 5000 spams.
Are You Interested to Pay For an Effective Online Service?
This is a simple but important question to know if we have any market or not?
- Yes: 16.7%
- No: 33.3%
- Depends on prices: 50%
And here is the point! Our pricing can bring more commercial users to our service!
How Much of Money Can You Pay For Such an Online Service Monthly?
It was also important to know the answer to this question because it could help us define a more flexible pricing.
- Less than $5: 66.7%
- $5-$20: 33.3%
- $20-$50: 0%
- $50-$100": 0%
- Over $100: 0%
Yes! Most of users would like to pay less than $5 per month. We heard your voice!
How Many Site Instances Do You Have?
The number of sites instances it the second parameter that we use to differentiate our account types. We had to know about your requirements and this question was designed to accomplish this goal.
There were different answers to this question but the average number was 11.
Which Pricing Strategy Do You Prefer?
The last question was deigned to let you put yourself in charge of us and decide on your own!
- Cheaper prices with more limitations: 16.7%
- Regular prices with regular limitations: 83.3%
- Higher prices with less limitations: 0%
Your answers do not need any explanation because they’re speaking for their own!
Conclusion
So what’s our final understanding of your answers? We think that:
- Our users have an open position for an effective online service in their anti-spam strategies.
- They are aware of downsides of CAPTCHA controls.
- Most of them have a blog or forum or a combination of them.
- Most of them receive less than 1000 items and less than 1000 spams per months.
- At the moment most of them have a small site with a few site instances.
- Users are ready to pay for a good online service but it depends on pricing strategy. They prefer cheaper prices and a pricing that targets regular limitations with regular prices.
We consider these points in our initial pricing system that will be announced very soon. Of course, we are also aware of the fact that current answers may be different in the future so we’ll ask you about them on a regular basis every a few months.
At the end we would thank everyone who participated in our first survey and shared his or her opinions with us.
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