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Fernan de Dios

Anyone here launched a free tool as a growth channel?

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We recently launched a free chart generator (CSV/Excel → charts) alongside our main product—not as part of our free tier, but as a completely no-signup tool.

The goal is to let people experience the value immediately—that “aha moment” of turning raw data into a clean chart before asking for anything.

So instead of:
👉 sign up → learn → use

We flipped it to:
👉 use → see value → then consider signing up

Now we’re trying to figure out the right balance between:

  • Keeping it frictionless
    vs

  • Introducing conversion points (save, embed, share, etc.)

Curious how others here approached this

  • Have you tried a separate free tool (not just a free tier)?

  • Did it actually convert into users or customers?

  • Where did you introduce signup without hurting UX?

  • Anything you’d do differently?

If you're curious, its at: https://embedful.io/chart-generator/

Would love to hear real experiences 🙏

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Emilis Venckus
Hi Fernan, I am doing visualization of personal energy with an Energy Dashboard at https://energija.online as a side project. Implemented the Use -> feel value -> consider sign up approach 2 days ago to give visitors 0 entry barrier to experience the unknown website and understand the idea right on the landing page with no sign up. I noticed a very slight increase in visitor numbers, but most still did not stay too long and did not sign up. I am still early, experimenting and watching. I ask users to sign up if they want to save their energy dashboard, share them, export/import them or have higher AI Assistant messages. I ask them to make a purchase if they hit advanced features like energy production or storage details or want to have unlimited access to all current and future features. What are your experiences?
Fernan de Dios

@emilis_venckus Hi Emilis! I love your project, very nice! This is a really interesting direction, I like the "feel value first" approach you’re taking. On my end, it’s still very fresh too. I only introduced the free tool around 2 days ago, so there aren’t any meaningful or noticeable changes yet as far as I can see. Traffic and behavior are still pretty much the same, so I’m treating this as an early observation phase.

I do think this kind of shift usually needs more time and a bit more distribution before you see clear signals. Right now I’m mostly focused on getting more people to actually try the tool first, then watching where they drop off.

Curious to hear how your experiments evolve over the next couple of weeks