I'm Done With Free Tools. All my life, I'd first launch my products...
John Rush@johnrush
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Jan 14, 2024
~4 min read
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I'm Done With Free Tools.
All my life, I'd first launch my products for free. Recently, I changed that for b2b SaaS products.
Now every tool comes with a price.
The outcome was pretty shocking.
The upside of going for Paid versus Free was completely different than what I thought it was.
[Story: Everyone loved it, None paid]
In 2018, We launched a tool for biz administration.
It was targeted towards SMBs. we pitched it to our networks, people seemed to like it, and some asked for access. We shared, people signed up and used it.
Since it's a biz admin tool, users need it just sometimes. So we'd say: let's count signups as our KPI.
The Cofounder said: let's add pricing. I said: let's give it away for free to the first 100 users and we charge later.
Long story short: once we asked them to pay in a year, none did. Literally none. Zero.
But all this year, we were convinced we have a good product and users need it.
We were wrong.
Free users are the worst way to validate the product.
They often don't even represent your audience. But yet, they kept asking for features, we built all they asked and in the end, they didn't wanna pay.
So basically we pivoted the product into something great for the group that doesn't wanna pay for it!
[It's a Trap]
Free users are a trap. They create a false sense of PMF. You think "Yeah, I've made it, they use".
[They ask the wrong stuff]
Free users ask for more features than paid users. And the product just shifts towards a state, where it's good for free, and not good for pro.
[John 2.0]
So as an experiment, I ditched the free version for my new product launched.
The results were shocking to me personally.
I had fewer users, but paying users.
They behaved in a much more professional way, so the support was actually fun, rather than a job.
The feedback started being super constructive, often they would just write up the whole spec for the change, basically doing the whole job for me.
They would almost always quickly bring friends who also want to use this product.
They would often do an action such as a tweet, blog post, or similar about my tool.
I was sitting there and thinking...How and Why is this? Totally counterintuitive. I'd expect the users, who got my tool for free, to go out and scream about it. Bring me more users, recommend them to their friends, and give polite feedback. But NO.
The worst ever support chats would always be the free users. And 99% of them would never do any "ambassador" like action toward my product.
[Validation on a Real Case]
On Friday, I launched indexrusher.com with no free tier. Lots of users signed up for a paid plan and I had one of the most fun chats over the whole week with these users here on X. I just gave them tons of SEO advice, and they gave me feedback on my tools, with some we ended up becoming friends I think.
[Wrap Up]
- free users might be a fake sign of success
- paid users make it clear: users actually like it
- paid users create organic growth
- paid users give 100x more constructive feedback
- paid users often have friends, who'd pay too
The End.
P.S. This applies to B2B SaaS tools only.
It's totally fine to make free lead magnets, directories, and other side stuff that drive traffic to the main project.
P.S.S Also I'll keep the free tier for @unicornplatform.
I may even add a free tier to my products after PMF.
So what I said applies to the pre-PMF phase.
Once PMF is achieved, the free tier is just yet another marketing tactics.
All my life, I'd first launch my products for free. Recently, I changed that for b2b SaaS products.
Now every tool comes with a price.
The outcome was pretty shocking.
The upside of going for Paid versus Free was completely different than what I thought it was.
[Story: Everyone loved it, None paid]
In 2018, We launched a tool for biz administration.
It was targeted towards SMBs. we pitched it to our networks, people seemed to like it, and some asked for access. We shared, people signed up and used it.
Since it's a biz admin tool, users need it just sometimes. So we'd say: let's count signups as our KPI.
The Cofounder said: let's add pricing. I said: let's give it away for free to the first 100 users and we charge later.
Long story short: once we asked them to pay in a year, none did. Literally none. Zero.
But all this year, we were convinced we have a good product and users need it.
We were wrong.
Free users are the worst way to validate the product.
They often don't even represent your audience. But yet, they kept asking for features, we built all they asked and in the end, they didn't wanna pay.
So basically we pivoted the product into something great for the group that doesn't wanna pay for it!
[It's a Trap]
Free users are a trap. They create a false sense of PMF. You think "Yeah, I've made it, they use".
[They ask the wrong stuff]
Free users ask for more features than paid users. And the product just shifts towards a state, where it's good for free, and not good for pro.
[John 2.0]
So as an experiment, I ditched the free version for my new product launched.
The results were shocking to me personally.
I had fewer users, but paying users.
They behaved in a much more professional way, so the support was actually fun, rather than a job.
The feedback started being super constructive, often they would just write up the whole spec for the change, basically doing the whole job for me.
They would almost always quickly bring friends who also want to use this product.
They would often do an action such as a tweet, blog post, or similar about my tool.
I was sitting there and thinking...How and Why is this? Totally counterintuitive. I'd expect the users, who got my tool for free, to go out and scream about it. Bring me more users, recommend them to their friends, and give polite feedback. But NO.
The worst ever support chats would always be the free users. And 99% of them would never do any "ambassador" like action toward my product.
[Validation on a Real Case]
On Friday, I launched indexrusher.com with no free tier. Lots of users signed up for a paid plan and I had one of the most fun chats over the whole week with these users here on X. I just gave them tons of SEO advice, and they gave me feedback on my tools, with some we ended up becoming friends I think.
[Wrap Up]
- free users might be a fake sign of success
- paid users make it clear: users actually like it
- paid users create organic growth
- paid users give 100x more constructive feedback
- paid users often have friends, who'd pay too
The End.
P.S. This applies to B2B SaaS tools only.
It's totally fine to make free lead magnets, directories, and other side stuff that drive traffic to the main project.
P.S.S Also I'll keep the free tier for @unicornplatform.
I may even add a free tier to my products after PMF.
So what I said applies to the pre-PMF phase.
Once PMF is achieved, the free tier is just yet another marketing tactics.
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one more reason to go for premium only, from personal experience of @levelsio .
Which is pretty relevant.
At @unicornplatform we fight fishing sites all the time.
99% of them come from free tier users.
90% of our support effort also goes to free users
Which is pretty relevant.
At @unicornplatform we fight fishing sites all the time.
99% of them come from free tier users.
90% of our support effort also goes to free users
@levelsio@levelsio
Difference between a freemium and a paid only product:
Until last month 🏡 InteriorAI.com was freemium, you'd sign up, get free renders, and then could upgrade to paid
Got 👺DDOS'd and forced to make it paid only, sign up goes to Stripe, revenue up
Thank you DDOS'ers!
Until last month 🏡 InteriorAI.com was freemium, you'd sign up, get free renders, and then could upgrade to paid
Got 👺DDOS'd and forced to make it paid only, sign up goes to Stripe, revenue up
Thank you DDOS'ers!
