24
220 free users and nobody paying: the order to look at things, from the cheapest
Sat at zero paid for months. The useful sequence turned out to be diagnosis before pricing changes, and it goes in this order.
- Are the free users the same people who would pay? Mine were mostly students and hobbyists using it for something a business would never do. The conversion rate was not low; the audience was wrong. Check this first because everything downstream is meaningless if it is the answer.
- Do they hit the limit at all? If nobody reaches the free ceiling, there is no moment where paying occurs to them. My cap was generous enough that most users never once bumped into it.
- Is the paid tier solving a problem they have, or one you have? Mine added capacity. They did not want more capacity, they wanted a thing to work with other people.
- Do they know a paid tier exists? Measurable and embarrassing. A meaningful share had never seen the pricing page.
- Only now, price. By this point you know who, when and why, and the number is the easy part.
What did not help: a redesigned pricing page, a discount, and a trial banner. All three were changes at step five for a problem at step one.
The cheapest instrument in this whole list is talking to twenty free users.
@wrong_free_tier · 3w ago
Step two was my entire problem. My free tier was generous because I was afraid of being stingy, and it meant the product was complete for almost everyone.
The fix was not lowering the cap. It was moving the boundary to a different axis: free stayed unlimited on volume and paid became the thing you need when somebody else is involved. Nobody complained, because nothing anybody was already doing got taken away.
Reply
Report