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.
Replies
For us, the rule is simple: free features get you to the result, paid ones get you there faster or with more control. The core value has to be accessible — otherwise people never stick around long enough to see why the upgrade is worth it.
The tricky part isn't deciding what to charge for, it's making sure the free experience is good enough to build trust, but not so complete that there's no reason to go further.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@microcamtest Feel it the same way.
For now, my rule is that a free product should feel great, but limited, to the point where a user who wants to use it more than once has to pay.
In software, they almost always ask for a free trial, and as long as it's financially feasible, I always offer it.
In many cases, I'd like to be more generous with freemium plans, but it's just a matter of budget.
This is a massive challenge, especially when your target audience is students who don't have credit cards. Instead of a traditional paywall, I actually architected a completely different system for my launch today: a simulated virtual economy.
Users don't pay with fiat; they pay with 'Focus Hours' that they earn by studying. They use that currency in a live virtual exchange to unlock premium 3D assets in their dashboard. It creates the friction and value of a paid tier, but entirely through gamified sweat equity. Would love to hear if anyone else has experimented with virtual economies over strict paywalls!
I like the way you framed it around general vs tailored value, that’s a really clean way to think about it.
For products, it often feels similar: free should help users understand the value, while paid should unlock outcomes they can’t easily get on their own.
The tricky part is finding that boundary where free is useful, but not enough to replace the need for the paid layer.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@munevver_ertuncccc I am still figuring this our :D
Magic
@busmark_w_nika , glad your LinkedIn is still unblocked 😄 Still following. More billboards in the works.
Honestly, no formula here. Early on people paid just to skip our waitlist fro Magic, which was a lucky start.
After that it's just two things: how much you can afford to give away, and giving enough value to hook someone before they see pricing.
User behavior keeps shifting though. I'd call it the SaaSpocalypse but we're all just figuring it out
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@ivan_puzyrev I need to say that your product grabbed my attention when you reacted quickly and created that billboard :D
Simple rule we landed on: let people experience the core value for free, charge for scale and depth. Our sandbox is completely free - anyone can run a sample evaluation to see exactly what the product does. The paid tier unlocks real usage, team features, and the full analysis engine. The logic: if someone tries the free version and doesn't immediately see the value, no pricing trick will fix that. And if they do see it, the paid price is a rounding error on the problem cost.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@avrisimon Did you start asking for money from the very beginning? Or was there any trial?
Veltrix AI
How about a free trial?
I'm building a consumer product, and I believe that when possible, flexibility is key. Allow the consumer to decide whether they want a free ad-supported version, paid ad-free version, etc. Not only is optionality better for consumers, it allows you to understand what consumers value and how much they value it for. You get richer insights.
That being said, I do not want to ever charge a subscription for my specific product's core functionality (splitting receipts in seconds by scanning a receipt photo or pasting a link).
The goal of the company is to make it as easy as possible for people to spend quality time together, by reducing friction from social admin work like splitting bills. So charging for the core functionality is misaligned the mission.
It always comes back to the company's mission and the product's purpose. That's how you build lasting growth. There are always multiple avenues for revenue, and you don't want the avenue chosen to be misaligned with the product & company mission. That will catch up with you down the line in terms of your customer loyalty, retention, and growth numbers.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@mckinley_lovett Okay, but how did you get those insights? Did you make any internal research of pricing?
I test paywalls by un-gating them. I had a fix once that looked "correct" untill I reverted the code. The test still passed). It was never testing the bug. If you make the paid feature free and the upgrade rates stay identical, that feature was never why people paid
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@busmark_w_nika yes. we highlighted a single option and reduced the text. it moved the conversion a bit. But the visual tweaks never chaged the numbers like shifting what value was gated )
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@konstantin_tikhaev If you have any learnings, feel free to share them, i need to scale :D
Manipulist for MacOS
are you able to display a demo so people can see what you are building, instead of giving away part of the app for free?