7. What's Missing: The Gap Between Built and Paid, Renewed, Referred
Assumption: nothing is built yet. So these are gaps between the idea and a business.
7.1 Gaps to pay
| Gap | Why it blocks payment | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The content store has already shipped your product | Notion Forms is free and Notion Sites is free. Nobody pays for what they have. | Leave Notion. Build on Confluence Cloud as a Forge app (01). |
| No defined buyer | "Notion users who want a help center" is a crowd with seven vendors | Software companies with 10–250 Confluence users that pay for a separate help center. |
| No quantified value promise | "Beautiful help center" doesn't beat free or incumbent | "Cancel your $50–695 a month help center, write once, and get a weekly list of what customers couldn't find." |
| High switching cost | Moving 300 articles and redirects is a project | Do the move for the first 10 customers by hand. Productise the import after that. |
| No trust signals on the Marketplace | Zero reviews against 111 | Pilots leave reviews. Publish a data-flow page, a DPA and a security self-assessment at launch. |
7.2 Pricing
Atlassian Marketplace cloud apps are priced by user tier. The prices below are recommended, not tested:
| Edition | ≤10 users | 11–50 users | 51–100 users | 101–250 users | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | ~$20 | ~$45 | ~$75 | ~$120 | 1 public site, custom domain, search, doc-owner loop, article feedback |
| Advanced | ~$60 | ~$110 | ~$160 | ~$240 | Several sites, AI answers with citations (capped), gated sections, import tools |
- Blended target: ≥$50 a month. Scroll Sites starts at $25 for up to 10 users, so don't undercut on the entry tier. Win on the loop and the move.
- No free plan. Use the Marketplace trial. No lifetime deals.
- Pilots: a $150–300 one-off move, with 3 months included, then the Marketplace price with founding-customer pricing held for 12 months.
7.3 Gaps to renew
| Gap | Fix |
|---|---|
| A help center is "set and forget", so value fades from view | The weekly doc-owner tasks and a monthly docs-health email: gaps found, pages fixed, searches that now succeed. |
| No switching cost once it's live | Each customer's search history, feedback and fixed-gap record lives in your app. Leaving loses it. |
| AI answers that are wrong | Citations only. If there's no page, say so and hand off to support. |
| Price rises at renewal from user-tier growth | Tell customers in advance. Offer annual billing at the old tier. |
7.4 Gaps to refer
| Gap | Fix |
|---|---|
| Nothing visibly shareable | A small "Published with HelpDeck" footer on the Standard edition, removable on Advanced. Every visitor sees it. |
| No free hook | A free help-center checker: paste a URL, get search, speed, broken links and llms.txt results. HelpKit's early growth came from a free Notion Table Generator. |
| No partner channel | Atlassian Solution Partners set up Confluence for clients. Offer them a referral fee or partner pricing after month 9. |
| No community presence | Answer "how do I publish Confluence publicly?" threads in the Atlassian Community. There are recurring ones. |
7.5 Non-product gaps
Distribution
- Missing entirely from the idea. HelpKit grew through building in public, a free tool and SEO. NotionForms grew through SEO, Reddit, Product Hunt and a branded-footer loop. Both started when there was little competition.
- For the wedge, three channels: (a) Marketplace search and reviews, (b) migration guides ("Zendesk Guide to Confluence"), (c) the free checker. Atlassian partners later.
- Channels that burn cash: paid ads, AppSumo.
Positioning
- Current: "sells what Notion is missing". That's a list of features Notion will ship.
- Better: "Write your help docs once, in Confluence. Publish them to your customers, and see every week what they couldn't find."
Sales motion
- Product-led through the Marketplace, with founder-led onboarding for the first 20 teams.
- Done-for-you moves at first. Turn them into an import tool after 10.
Compliance and legal
| Area | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Page restrictions | Never publish a page the Confluence permissions restrict. Test on every release. One leak ends the app. |
| Data privacy | GDPR and CCPA for visitor analytics and gated-section logins. Collect as little as possible, with cookieless analytics by default. DPA at launch. |
| Data residency | EU buyers will ask. State where pages are cached. Refined offers EU residency. |
| Atlassian terms | Marketplace partner agreement, Forge terms, security self-assessment. Cloud Fortified later. |
| AI answers | Label AI answers, cite sources, and don't train on customer content. EU AI Act transparency duties may apply. |
| Accessibility | Public sites for EU customers may fall under the European Accessibility Act. Ship an accessible theme (WCAG 2.1 AA). |
Team
- Not provided. You need someone who has shipped a Forge app and can run a small public-site service reliably. Customer access to software support teams is the second need.
Metrics and instrumentation
- Activation: first public site live with a custom domain within 7 days of install.
- Weekly: doc-owner tasks created and closed per customer.
- Monthly: revenue churn, trial-to-paid, reviews, share of trials from Marketplace versus content.