How do you decide what features should be free and what should be paid?
Let me start from the creator’s perspective:
I personally don’t have a product (apart from hiring people for creative work or offering personal consultations).
But as a creator, I constantly share content, insights, and information, value that helps me build trust (for free). Based on that perceived expertise, people eventually decide to work with me (a paid service).
So some things I share for free to eventually move toward a paid collaboration.
Personally, it’s sometimes hard to judge when I might be giving away too much for free.
And I assume it’s similarly tricky for builders.
You want users to try the product, but then comes the question of paid features, or a trial limited by time or usage.
How do you decide which parts of your product or service remain free, and which become paid?
When I share content publicly, I usually provide generalised advice. But when it comes to a specific case or a tailored strategy that requires a personal approach, that’s where it becomes paid.
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Rule I use with InterviewAI: free = the thing that makes them realize they need it. For us that's the
first full interview + feedback. Paid = the thing they want after they're hooked (more sessions, company
packs like Google/Meta/Amazon). Free has to be good enough to impress, not good enough to replace paid."
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@doron_sun The easiest and most digestible formula! :)
For us, the rule is simple: free should help users get value, paid should help them get serious results faster, more consistently, and at scale.
For a product like PromptGPT, we know the real challenge is that most people still struggle to write good prompts, especially for image, video, and audio models. So if you put the core learning and discovery behind a paywall too early, many users never even reach the real value.
My approach is:
Free gets users to their first real win.
Paid helps them do it faster, better, repeatedly, and at scale.
That’s the philosophy I believe in. That’s also why PromptGPT is free, we want people to learn, experiment, and get value without friction. If we ever monetize it further, it would be around workflow leverage, not access to the basics.
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@nafii But is it somehow determined on your end? E.g. how many times they can use your tool or for how long? Or limited features?
We went with no free tier at all - just a 30-day money-back guarantee. At £24.95 one-time for a desktop utility, a free version felt like it would undermine the value more than boost conversions.
The thinking: at this price point, a money-back guarantee IS the trial. The customer has committed psychologically, refund rates at sub-£30 are typically under 5%, and you skip the engineering overhead of maintaining two versions.
A good demo video showing the tool in action does more for conversion than a limited free version ever could. Early days for us (just launched this week) so happy to report back on whether this approach actually works!
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@jo_public How successful were you with that approach?
Honestly? We literally launched on Friday so I have zero conversion data to share yet! But the logic felt right: at £24.95 the risk is so low for the buyer that a money-back guarantee removes whatever hesitation is left. Ask me again in a month and I'll have real numbers for you.
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@jo_public circle back then with more entry info :D
@busmark_w_nika Will do! Only been live a few days so give me a couple of weeks and I'll have some real numbers to share. Watch this space :)
Solo dev here, built a productivity app (Flowmodoro). My approach: the core experience should always be free and genuinely useful on its own. If the free tier feels crippled, people just leave. For me the paid features are the "power user" stuff — detailed stats, achievements, advanced customization. Things that someone who already loves the app will happily pay for because they're hooked on the workflow. The mistake I see a lot is putting basic functionality behind the paywall. If someone can't even feel the value of your product before paying, why would they pay? Let them fall in love first 😄
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@thenomadcode For how long have you been building that app?
Hello Inbox
Now that AI companies are scraping the web, I will no longer publish blog posts sharing my knowledge/expertise. All my deep industry knowledge will be private and behind a paywall. I will still write blog posts but it will focus on how to solve X problem with our tool without giving away any deep industry knowledge or expertise. I have a free plan but it's very limited and used to show users a wow moment.
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@ismaelyws Maybe try LinkedIn, that's quite aversive and strict against scraping.
Hello Inbox
@busmark_w_nika IMO the problem is much bigger than that. Big deals are being done behind the scenes for raw, private user data to train LLMs. At some point Linkedin will do the same. Only a matter of time. I think everyone should keep ALL their deep industry knowledge private and secure.
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@ismaelyws With their growing user base, I have to agree. But that's the meaning of each corporate that wants profits (even more profits)
One pattern I keep seeing: teams don't just struggle with the free/paid split — they struggle to gather current competitor, pricing, and user-signal evidence fast enough to decide confidently. I'm testing a fixed-scope, one-off research brief for exactly that decision layer. Curious whether a source-backed brief would be more useful here than another brainstorming session.
Real example from the trenches: We built ReadyPermit -- an AI property intelligence tool that screens 142 zoning, flood, setback, and buildability factors on any US address.
Our free vs paid split came down to one question: what gives someone enough value to trust us with their wallet?
Free: 4 standalone tools (Flood Zone Checker, Zoning Lookup, ADU Eligibility, Buildability Score). Each one solves a real problem on its own. People share them. They come back.
Paid: The full 142-factor report that replaces a $3,500 consultant. That's where the depth lives.
The framework that worked for us: give away the "what" for free, charge for the "so what." Anyone can look up if they're in a flood zone. But knowing what that means for their specific build plan, setbacks, permit timeline -- that's where people pay.
5,000+ reports delivered so far. The free tools are our best acquisition channel by far. Not even close.
This is one of the hardest decisions in SaaS — and I've changed my mind on it multiple times while building our product. The framework that finally clicked for us: free features should solve a real problem well enough that users become dependent on the workflow. Paid features should amplify that workflow or unlock scale.
The mistake I see most often is making the free tier so limited it feels like a demo rather than a product. If someone can't get genuine value from your free tier, they'll never trust you enough to pay. On the flip side, if your free tier is too generous, you end up with massive infrastructure costs and no conversion pressure.
Our approach: the core experience is always free. Anything that involves team collaboration, advanced analytics, or enterprise-grade controls is paid. That way individual users fall in love with the product, then bring it to their team — and that's when the paid features become essential.From building enterprise AI products, my framework is: free features should create an "aha moment" that makes the value of paid tiers self-evident. For AI specifically, giving users access to core functionality with usage limits works better than feature-gating — people need to experience the full power before they understand why they'd pay. The mistake I see most often is making the free tier so limited it doesn't showcase the product's real capabilities, which kills conversion. Enterprise buyers especially need to see ROI proof before committing budget. We've found that letting teams run real workflows end-to-end (with volume caps) converts far better than restricting which features they can touch.
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@vishnu_nc I hope that with my product, I fall into that frame of "amplify workflow" so I will be profiting soon :D Jokes aside – which product have you built?
The tricky part is that the more valuable your free content becomes the harder it is to justify the paid layer.
In my experience free should create clarity not completeness. If someone feels understood but not fully solved that’s usually the right balance.