The onboarding asked ten minutes of questions about the worst thing that had happened to them, then showed the paywall

One more from the review pull, and it is the one I would put in front of anyone designing a long onboarding.

Small app, emotionally heavy category. 27 of its 41 low star reviews, and near enough all of them are the same complaint. Almost nothing about features.

"Says free. Filled in dozens of questions and then a full paywall, not even a limited version." "Going through my first breakup, worst I have ever felt, I genuinely need something like this and I cannot pay for it." And the one that made me write this: "made me write out everything about my relationship for ten minutes, made me relive all of it, then asked for money."

The long questionnaire is normally defended as commitment and personalisation, and in the funnel it works, right up to the paywall. Completion looks great. What it is actually buying is a worse review, because a person who has spent ten minutes and disclosed something does not bounce quietly. They leave a review, and it is about you rather than about the price.

The technical complaints in the same pile are almost an afterthought: notifications never arrive, check ins do not save, password reset does not work. Nobody would have written those up if the paywall had not put them in the mood.

The cheap change is ordering. One working screen first, questions after.