Saas companies, lets talk converting free users to paid

@aleksandraszte2 For Stormly I noticed you give free demos for a significant chunk of time as well as offer a free tier. What have you noticed as being one of the biggest factors to get users to make that switch from free to Small?

@aleksandraszte2 I disagree with focussing on what the competition are offering. I tried that and just couldn't compete. My main competitor is a huge company with funding and ad revenue. When I forgot about them and just focussed on what makes my company awesome then I started getting paid users.

@mickc79 Makes sense, every industry and product is different, I guess after all, testing what works best for you and your users is the key.

@vlad_zaev Agreed. It's difficult to "convert" users to paid if they are not finding the product useful. I think the best way to do this is to focus on the beginning stages of the user lifecycle in order to help the user find high value in your free offering, and offering additional long term value in your paid offering(s). If you focus on activating users in their initial experiences, nurturing them to be successful users, you'll set yourself up for higher probability of free -> paid conversion in a more natural way vs. trying to "sell" users on your paid service. One tactic that is sometimes helpful for users who have been active a little while is to offer your paid service for free for a short time in order for the user to try it. This lowers the barrier, but gives the user a taste of the paid experience.

@vlad_zaev @sean_foster1 Good points! Regarding the tactic you mentioned, from our experience, giving more free service to already free users usually doesn't bring conversions. It's good to keep in mind that there is a segment that will simply not pay, instead, would rather look for a similar offering for free. From our experience, it is good to review whether the free plan doesn't give away too much, unless at this point, your strategy is to gain the biggest amount of users, no matter if they pay or not. If your goal is profitability, sometimes less (paying users) is more (than a bunch of free-planners).

@vlad_zaev @sean_foster1 Very good insight guys, thank you. That is more or less along the lines of what we currently try and do. 95% of our features are completely free or offer a smaller taste for what the upgraded paid version of the feature would be. We never try and stonewall users or block off any one thing completely because we just want to provide value to them and if they want the additional benefit of increased functionality of a specific feature they can choose to upgrade.

@austin @mirko_maccarrone Its everything, right! None of us can operate without revenue and its super helpful to hear what other people are doing or have tried

@fritzly I just mentioned above how we are taking a similar path to what you are trying out too. A majority of our platform is completely free and users will have, at the very least, access to every feature in one shape or form even if it is ultimately a pro (paid) feature. You will get that enhancement by upgrading your account but it's certainly not required to get value from using the web app.

@lina_ka I think what the commenter above said, Matt Davis, applies to this. If you ONLY offer a free trial with no free option what so ever it depends heavily on what type of platform you are running. There are many instances where I start a free trial and accomplish my goals well within the time constraints that the trial put on me then never have a need to upgrade. If you can create a ton of value at a good price that is a great start. Make sure you talk to your customers as best as possible and ask them about their experience, what they would have liked to see, why they aren't sticking with your software. Those unsubscribe / exit surreys if you don't already implement them could be very insightful.