I had a rough week a couple months ago. Numbers were flat, motivation was low, and I was opening my analytics dashboard like 20 times a day hoping something would change. It never did.
So I just stopped. Not intentionally. I forgot one day, then the next, then suddenly two weeks had passed.
When I finally opened it back up, expecting a disaster, I found roughly the same numbers. No crash. No spike. Just the slow steady nothing I'd been obsessively watching.
Part of me felt relief. Part of me felt something worse like the thing I'd been pouring all my anxiety into didn't actually need me watching it every day.
I assumed a generous freemium plan was the ultimate growth engine for organic user acquisition. But after months of high user signups with virtually flat revenue, switching to a strict 14 day free trial completely transformed our numbers.
The freemium tier was giving away just enough value that users never felt the urgency to upgrade, effectively turning our SaaS into a free utility.
For SaaS founders: did implementing a free tier build a loyal pipeline for you, or did it just bleed server costs without driving conversions?
We used to default to monthly pricing because it lowered the friction for new users. However, after switching the toggle default to annual billing (with a "2 months free" incentive), our upfront cash flow and annual contract value doubled within two quarters.
While initial visitor drop off was slightly higher, the users who did sign up were significantly higher quality and had a much lower churn rate.
Curious about your pricing page strategy does defaulting to annual plans hurt your initial sign ups or does it dramatically improve user retention ?
I ve been thinking about this over the past few weeks, especially as larger tech corporations that weren t originally built around AI (Oracle, Meta, ClickUp, etc.) have started mass layoffs in favour of more efficient AI-driven solutions.
From that, it seems like AI companies must be doing extremely well and are actively trying to protect their positions. This also suggests that to strengthen their position (besides AI itself), they still need human capital to help them grow.
I had a super unconventional journey into tech startups. I worked on the product teams at various Fortune 500s for years before I discovered my love for building products myself. I spent countless hours browsing through Product Hunt but only as a lurker and occasionally commenting on others' work. Eventually, frustrated by my lack of action and inability to write code, I stepped up in 2018 (thanks to the book Atomic Habits) and decided to build tiny teeny projects with no-code. Shipped my 1st project Do Things That Don't Scale in 5 days that became the #1 Product Of The Day which gave me the impetus to continue building a portfolio of over 10 projects
Hi Makers! Post your product in this thread if you are: (1) launching soon or recently launched (2) looking for feedback on your landing page
(3) looking for someone to beta-test your product and give feedback on the product before launch I believe in giving before asking. Start by helping someone who have posted their product, help them with their question, give a suggestion, write a review or a comment on their launch page. Once you have helped someone else out, share your product link here and clearly state what kind of help you need.
I'm preparing for my first Product Hunt launch this Monday.
For those who've launched before: looking back, what's one thing you wish you had done differently in the final few days before launch? Could be positioning, launch page, community engagement, distribution, timing, or something completely unexpected.
A user asked me to build a feature last month. Not huge. Maybe a week of work. My instinct was to say yes like I always do.
But I looked at my roadmap, looked at what I was already behind on, and just said no. I explained why it didn't fit right now. I braced for them to leave.
They replied "totally understand, thanks for being honest."
