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
I guess it also means in which stage of your career journey you are. If the builder is a well know person/company in its community, if being recommended, and has the trust of so many people, starting for free might be too cheap. ;)
On the other hand, me, being in a position to make a product publicly known for a first time, nobody will give me money just like that ;)
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@stoyan_minchev That's also true, I don't expect that Marc Lou or Levelsio would give their tools for free when they have already built personal brands.
For Echosig I went through this exact wrestle and landed on a framework that made it feel less like a guessing game: free should remove the reason not to try and paid should reward people who've already decided it works for them.
In practice that meant asking what's the thing that makes a sceptic say "fine, I'll give it a go"? For me that was: no credit card, no time bomb, no "free trial" language. Just a genuinely free tier that handles real use cases forever. That removes friction at the top of the funnel and is honest about the product's confidence in itself.
The paid tier then isn't about gatekeeping the good stuff. It's for teams that have grown into needing more: more users, more control, more advanced features. The upgrade moment should feel natural, not forced.
One thing that helped me: I stopped asking "what should be free?" and started asking "what does a free user need to have a real experience?" and made sure that is available. Everything beyond that is a conversation about paid plans.
Am still early in my journey, so I'm sure this will evolve, but it makes my decision-making easier so far.
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@daemkl so what are the free features? What are they?
Personally as a developer.... I usually just make personal apps and put them out for free using free resources and open source it.
But my thought process is if it goes through a server (for which you usually pay) i have to pay for then i make it paid.
if i am not putting any currency to operate and no one asked for it it is free. If I do pay for something or make it for a client it is paid.
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@bhargavaram_krishnapur How do you earn money then when you code apps that are for free? :D
Hi @busmark_w_nika Love this thread — especially the idea that free should create the need for paid, not kill it.
My bias has always been toward using “free” to build trust first, even to the point of shipping something completely free / open source. Let people really get to know you, see how you think, and organically find your niche. Then ship a paid product that’s clearly a step up, not just a paywall around what used to be free.
Thinking about this from a few different angles, I’ve realized “fully free” has some hidden downsides too, so now I’m more interested in drawing a clear, intentional boundary:
One axis is risk: free is fine when the user can tolerate failure (it’s exploratory, low‑stakes). Once your product is running something critical — their money, reputation, or team workflow — it’s fair that paid kicks in, because you’re sharing that risk (reliability, support, data guarantees).
Another is time and irreversibility: free can cover short‑lived or lightweight usage. Paid should start where people’s past work and future plans are really “stored” in your product. If deleting their account tomorrow would genuinely hurt them, that’s a strong signal you’re in paid territory.
There’s also the question of influence: free users get a solid default experience; paid users get more say — priority support, roadmap influence, earlier access, maybe small customizations. The moment someone wants your product to bend around their specific workflow, they’re usually also the person most willing to pay.
Finally, I’ve realized pricing itself is a tool. If everything is free forever, you lose the ability to use things like launch offers, seasonal discounts, or “thank you” pricing for early adopters. A clear paid tier, even if you start generous, gives you a language for moments like Black Friday, product anniversaries, or rewarding long‑time users.
So my current philosophy is: I’m still happy to be generous and even open source the “public infrastructure” part. But I want a well‑designed paid layer that shows up exactly where risk, dependence, and long‑term commitment become real. Free builds the relationship; paid is where I’m willing to take on responsibility and optimize deeply for the people who decide to rely on it.
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@nfzh But of course, in many cases you need to start with free (actually in initial phases), when the product is relatively new (as the maker), so you need to earn the trust first.
By primarily answering two questions -
Is this feature really helping them expereince enough of the core value to realize the product works for them - Free. e.g a live chat widget on the website with basic bot flow to handle real conversations
Features that help them address the pain point at depth and scale - Paid - eg. Advanced Handoff to human, Multilanguage support, integration with existing tools like CRM etc.
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@yogesh_joshi9 I am more curious about those tools that have like 3 features and you know... they need to incorporate that free + paid aspect :D E.g. I do not have many features, so what will be for them free and then paid? :D I need to come up with more features then.
@busmark_w_nika :) I get it - but even with 3 features you can still do freemium. It's not always about how many features you have but how deeply you allow someone to use them. eg. Calendly - just one core feature of scheduling meeting but a free tier that allows basic scheduling but a paid version for more advance users needing features like teams scheduling, different event types etc.
Asa.team
It's a difficult question that we struggle with as well. We want to offer our features for free to draw more people, but then it becomes harder to demarket out what makes it worth paying for.
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@julian_asa usually you will need to add more features :D
Asa.team
@busmark_w_nika we have been, especially after hearing from users. Our most recent one comes after hearing similar pain points from people in the workplace, mentioning this idea of getting lost in the numerous project chats they have and wishing they had something to help them easily be kept up to date, which is why we came up with our latest launch, Project Intelligence. But we're still not sure if it's something everyone is keen and finds worth paying for, which is what we're testing out this launch today. Curious what you think about it too :)
Great question! I think the line is incredibly subjective and heavily tied to the product's stage of success. Honestly, I don't think you can ever know the "perfect" balance beforehand; you have to launch and iterate.
For my launch today (Status Notifier), I followed a specific philosophy: The Free tier should offer the 100% full functionality of the product, but with quotas on scale rather than usage.
I’m not a fan of "usage quotas" (like limiting how many hours a circle can stay open or how many updates you can send per day). I believe that if you offer something for free, it should be limitless within that tier. You shouldn't feel a "ticking clock" while trying to solve a problem.
Instead, I use quotas on entities, limiting the number of circles and the number of members per circle. This allows a user to fully experience the app and integrate the tool into their life without friction. Once they need to scale that success to a professional fleet or a large organization, the value of the tool has been proven, and the move to a paid tier feels like a natural step in their growth.
Ultimately, you start with a best guess, see how users react, and adjust the quotas as the product finds its footing!
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@costasathan Okay, but how do we convert users to a paid version? What "extra" is in the paid? :)
@busmark_w_nika
In my model, the "extra" isn't a secret feature, it’s scale and removal of friction.
For Status Notifier, the paid version simply lifts the quotas. While the Free tier gives you 100% of the tools (the overlay, the custom legends, the real-time sync), it limits you to 2 circles and 2 members per circle.
How does that convert users?
It creates a natural transition from "Personal Use" to "Professional Use".
The Proof: A user tries it with one co-driver or a spouse. They realize it works perfectly and if fulfills their needs without the frustration of locked features.
The Need: Now they want to roll it out to their whole fleet of 10 trucks or their entire logistics department or include more family members and extended family in their circles.
The Conversion: Because they already rely on the tool and know it solves their problem, paying for the "Ultimate" tier (unlimited circles and members per circle) feels like a fair business investment rather than an entry fee for a tool they haven't tested.
To me, the best conversion happens when a user says: "I love this so much I want to use it for my whole team." At that point, they aren't paying for "extra" functions; they are paying for the success the app provides at a larger scale.
As a new developer in the Crypto Tax space promoting Privacy - full disclosure is important to me. Therefor, providing users a privacy policy and access to all their calculations and reports is free. The only paid part of the app is printing final report PDF's and CSV's. They can use the software and manually transfer results to their tax submissions - and test results against their current methods. I am confident once they have all their data encrypted and classified, next year's taxes are a snap using my app. Plus, I am ultra competitive on price and security. For me accuracy matters too - users need to be 100% satisfied before they buy - because that's what I would want.
So - ask yourself the question first - what would I pay for this and where is the benefit? Then, be open with users.
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@robert_vassov I do not know whether you presented it like that, but I have a feeling that you are giving away too much value for free :D IMO, in a tiered offer, there should be more items included.
This is what i consider when i want to determine pricing and free features.
If the components are already free in some products, i usually make them free too, and if i added new features on to them then the new features will be available as a paid option.
Another metric i use is the quantity usage of the feature, the more the usage increases, the more the user will have to pay.
I'm still new to this, so i'm open to recommendations.
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@kutlwano_melamu What is your product? Comparative strategy is good to start with, but what if the product is unique for the category?
@busmark_w_nika I'll be launching soon(I'm still finding my way around product hunt).
That's a good point, hadn't thought of it that way, but if i had to i think it is important that you provide users with ample free usage to highlight the product's utility(just be aware of your finance's bandwidth). If you can not afford to offer free usage, i would advice to use interactive prototypes or videos to improve familiarity with clients.
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@kutlwano_melamu What would those videos promise? I mean... better conversion or?
@busmark_w_nika they help with product awareness, but i'm not convinced that they will definitely lead to conversion. I say this because to convert a user they usually have to develop trust in the product(that it does work as claimed)
I usually think about it like this: free should show the value, paid should deliver the deeper outcome.
Free features should let people understand what the product does and actually get a small win. If users can’t feel the value, they’ll never pay.
Paid features are usually the things that either save a lot of time, unlock more power, or scale the results. Basically the parts that become important once someone is already getting value.
For example:
Free → try the core idea
Paid → do more of it, faster, or with better results
I also try to avoid making the free version feel “crippled.” It should still be genuinely useful. If people like using it, upgrading becomes a natural step instead of a forced one.
It’s definitely a balancing act though sometimes you only figure it out after watching how users actually use the product.
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@sangeet_banerjee IMO, I am on the same page that when you show something for free, it should be high-quality, but it means, you should keep raising bar when people pay :)