🤔 Free or not free? 💰
What's one feature you're completely torn about pricing. Should it be free to hook users or paid to drive revenue? Builders, let's help each other out! 🚀
317 views
Subscribe
Sign in
What's one feature you're completely torn about pricing. Should it be free to hook users or paid to drive revenue? Builders, let's help each other out! 🚀
Replies
What about open source vs free?? 🤔🤔🤔
Atlas
@chrismessina Ooh Chris, you're opening up a whole can of worms! 🤔 Open source strategy is honestly outside my wheelhouse - I'm much better at helping builders figure out the 'should I charge for this feature' question. But now I'm super curious what others think about that balance! Anyone here navigating the open source vs free vs paid decision?
@chrismessina @laura_cruickshanks An interesting point, for me I think it comes down to what you are trying to achieve. Open source builds confidence, transparency and fits better with a long term vision.
Atlas
@chrismessina @a_s71 That's a really good point about the long-term vision thing 🤔
I keep wondering though - are there certain types of products that just don't lend themselves to being open source? Like maybe it's not just about what you're trying to achieve, but whether your product can even work in that model? I feel like developer tools seem to work great open source, but consumer apps or things where the secret sauce is in algorithms or curation... maybe less so?
Free limited version. Let them try it and at a certain point (e.g. limited by the number of tries, or after some time), ask for a payment.
@busmark_w_nika I totally agree, when I use a product I want to experience the full brilliance from the start. I don't want to experience the scaled down list of features - because this is what I usually remember about the product. I'm fine to be limited on amount of time I have the features for, but at least I can experience the full value.
Atlas
@busmark_w_nika @a_s71 so, i was on a call with a potential customer and i realized that this downgrading experience is really hard to build out. Have either of you had any experience setting that up on the product side?
@a_s71 @laura_cruickshanks I have experience like a user of CapCut – I had been using it 4 free for almost 2 years, had favourite effects and used them like a brand differentiator... and then boom – pricing tiers :D I was so used to it that it was easier and more comfortable to pay for it than searching for an alternative :D
Atlas
@busmark_w_nika +1
Also love a reverse trial. Get everything free for a certain amount of time or set of credit allotments.
Well, "free" isn’t really free. It costs you time, support headaches, and hosting fees for users who'll never pay. That’s why I'm a supporter of a tiny €1 trial (where the business model allows it). It’s amazing how even a euro weeds out the tire‑kickers and leaves you with people who actually care about what you’ve built. If someone isn’t willing to spend a single euro, they’re probably not going to stick around long‑term anyway. And honestly, you and your team poured your hearts into this product, don’t just give that away for free. A €1 trial feels risk‑free to customers but makes a huge difference for your business.
Atlas
@thomaskant You know... you're not the only one who I've heard say that. Do you think you might've been giving too much away for free? The trick is to give out just enough to make it sticky and indispensable so that they convert.
Sometimes users don't even want to give up their work email for a free trial so I'm glad the 1 Euro trial strategy works for you.
This is a great question, one we've debated often within our team. In our experience, offering a free plan can attract a lot of new users who are curious to try the product but never convert. It can also overwhelm our small team with support issues and in some cases, lead to platform abuse.
Because we're a small team with limited resources, we've chosen to offer a 7-day free trial instead of a permanent free plan. It's defintely a balancing act between growth and sustainability. Curious to hear how others have approached this.
Atlas
@sheauwoei working through the same conversations here! Is your product easy to setup?
@michaelthoy We are in the process of launching a new product and we want to make it easy for users to get set up and view a demo before starting a free trial. Our goal is to reduce churn by helping new potential users understand the value early on and avoid any mismatch. :)
Freemium (allow everyone to try your products with some limitations)
Atlas
@isibol01 let them use the product without any friction, show value, and convert them :)
Why do you think limitations are good?
@heyalper I just think a few thoughtful limitations can help guide users toward the core experience while still keeping some incentive to upgrade, kind of like giving a solid taste without the full buffet 🙂
Curious how you’d balance that with conversion?
That internal tug-of-war is too real. For me, it’s always the 'power feature' that users love once they try but won’t touch unless it’s free first.
I’ve leaned toward freemium with usage thresholds, so people get hooked but still feel the value as they scale. That said, I’ve also seen too much generosity stall the revenue engine. Always a balancing act.
Atlas
@vivek_sharma_25 YES! i agree. it's a balancing act on how much to give out for free. if you don't have the paywalls in place, you won't ever get customers to convert. but you also need to get them to feel like they can't do their job without your product, and that only works if you give them access to the right tools.
Atlas
Reserve Trial :) Let users experience the full version for a limited time. Then, downgrad to a freemium version if they don’t upgrade.
Atlas
@heyalper but how hard/easy is it to downgrade someone? i was just talking to @oleg_sobolev about it. for example: if a customer saves 10 files in the full version, but the downgraded version only allows for 3 files to be saved, how do you handle that?
Atlas
We're having this debate internally right now. Users continue to come in and use of "pricing recommendations" feature - its currently free. It ladders into a paid plan, but its driving value to the point where we're thinking about moving it into our paid tiers.
That said, its bringing a lot of people to Atlas as a lead magnet. I think the best proposal we've come up with is to continue to build on this value by expanding the feature set, and when ready, moving some parts of it into the monetized tiers.
Essentially, using the signal to prioritize building that feature out more, and keeping it free until its wide enough to break into monetizable pieces.
Atlas
@michaelthoy it could be that they run it for free, but to save it and track it for you it's paid.
From my side, I’ve seen success with a reverse trial full features for X days, then downgrade to freemium. It hooks users emotionally because they’ve already felt the “delight,” and they miss the full power once it's gone.
But I do wonder for features like dashboards or saved items, how do you handle the UX of taking away access? Feels like a delicate moment. Do you hide it? Grey it out? Curious how others handle the downgrade friction gracefully.
Atlas
@suvam_deo I'm wondering the same thing! How do you "take away" features? How do you prevent abuse of the free product?
An app I really liked was @Clockwise. It was a plug-in for my google calendar. The more coworkers that were on it, the better it functioned. It would automatically move meetings (like 1:1s) so you didn't have weird 30 minute gaps in your day so you could create more focus time. It was great! Once your free trial was up, it no longer moved them for you. It was painful. But our company wouldn't pay for it, so it just sat there - reminding me that I no longer had the benefits.
Can you think of any other apps that do it well?
free, then pay per use is best in my case!
Atlas
@nabin_paudel_phd is your app easy to do pay per use? how long do you give it to them for free?
ZapDigits
Depends on the product. There is no one fixed way to this.
Atlas
@malithmcrdev what are you doing for your product? I see you're launching soon. What's free and what's not? and how did you decide?
ZapDigits
Hey @laura_cruickshanks ,
I wanted to filter out users early. I am currently giving access to all the features for free without credit card and it is available only for one day. From next day on users have to choose a plan. But I am also planing to add an onboarding flow where they can extend the free version for extra days by asking them to do specific tasks. for example in my case: Create a dashboard - get 1 day more, Connect a data source - get 2 days more.
Atlas
@malithmcrdev Oh! Gamifying the onboarding process! We did that at my last job. We added time and MAUs when they completed onboarding steps.
Are your users able to get value in less than a day?
keep free for most of the time and rely on donation from dedicated fans until it really proves the values to much more ppl :)