Herculean isn’t free. It’s not free to run, update, maintain or host. I’m hyper efficient so it’s cheap but it isn’t free.
I could implement a “free” plan where you could use Herculean without paying, but I’m not going to.
Here’s why.
I built it for myself
Herculean started as an internal tool for my own productivity. I needed something in my corner that would let me focus on actually getting things done, rather than constantly juggling the endless stream of crap coming from clients, family, governments and everything else.
I knew the crap wasn’t ever going to stop and there was no cavalry coming to help. If I wanted to get more done, I needed to make better use of my own time and capabilities.
So I built Herculean.
I’d tried plenty of tools over the years, from more obscure options like Workflowy to the usual suspects from my professional life: Jira, Trello and - God help me - ClickUp.
But nothing let me manage everything in one place. All the different projects, responsibilities, commitments and endless moving parts needed to be handled in a way that allowed me, personally, to be hyper-efficient whilst maintaining maximum visibility and control.
Instead what I got from each of these was another mini-job. Every tool demanded its own time, energy and effort just to keep it running. I’d eventually resort to keeping a simple text file on whichever laptop or desktop I was using for that particular client, and mess of a file on my main machine.
It was basic, but it was the least amount of additional work. The downside is that it was just a text file.
I needed more than fucking text files. So I built Herculean.
Because I built Herculean for myself, I don’t have targets to hit, venture capitalists to satisfy or anyone breathing down my neck demanding growth. I can charge whatever I want for it, and I could just as easily choose not to release it at all.
But Herculean is simply too damn good to not throw it out into the world.
So then the question is, what should I charge for it? And should I charge it all?
Nothing of value is free
I’m old now so I get to frankly reflect about what I’ve had to deal with.
I’ve had very little for free and a whole lot of endless stupid shit dumped on my plate. As much as I hate the endless stupid shit, it has made me better, stronger, faster and more efficient.
Where I’ve had to pay a price, I’ve got something in return. And I’ve noted where others have had something for free, they’ve often lost it, squandered it or otherwise fucked it up.
Why would I take something as great as Herculean and diminish it by indicating it has no value and encouraging your worst human behaviours?
Buy me a beer
If we were sitting in a pub and you saw me using Herculean and asked, “Hey, could I try that for a month?” I’d probably say, “Sure, buy me a beer.”
And if you came back every month and bought me another beer, I’d be perfectly happy with that arrangement. A Guinness costs about five bucks where I live, so $5 a month works.
Now, if you loved Herculean but want to pay every month, that’s fine too. We used to give our postman a decent bottle of wine or whisky at Christmas. So buy me a decent bottle of whiskey, and I’ll keep your account running for the year. It’s like a Christmas catch up each year.
That’s literally Herculean’s pricing.
Money printing
There’s one thing I unfortunately have to mention - no matter the dollar amount, it’ll get inflated away by government money printing.
If beer and Scotch get more expensive, Herculean will eventually get more expensive for new customers too. That still meets the pricing philosophy even if the numbers change.
For existing customers, I intend to honour the price you signed up at for as long as reasonably possible. I hate when prices change on subscriptions so I’ll commit as best I can.
At some point though $5 will be worth less than the electricity to run Herculean so I’ll need to shift things about.
Basically…
I’ll charge a fair price. It’s just you paying me, there’s no VCs or other folks involved.
The numbers might change, but I’m happy with a Guiness a month or a whisky a year. I’ve been that way pretty much my entire adult life, I don’t think it’ll change.
Future changes might be enhanced modes or other dedicated versions of Herculean. But the core app will stay the same.
Even though beer prices change every month and all over the place I’m not going to be changing prices all the time. It’s obnoxious and I don’t really want to muck around with all the drama, ill will and other considerations.
If you’re an old customer I’ll prefer to keep you on the same price unless it becomes disconnected to my beer pricing. New customers will get price rises first.