We doubled our pricing and got more paying users
When we launched Starnus our competitors were charging $100+/month. So we thought let's undercut them. Start at $20. Make it a no brainer.
Signups were great. Payments? Almost zero.
Here's what actually changed our MRR:
1. Cheap pricing kills trust
At $20 people treated the product like a free tool. Sign up, poke around, leave. No urgency. No commitment. We raised to $49 starter and $184 pro and more people started paying. Not less. Higher price = higher perceived value. Founders don't want the cheapest tool. They want the one that looks like it works.
2. Free users are tourists
We had a generous free tier and it attracted the worst kind of users. People signing up with temporary emails, burning through credits, and disappearing. You can't even email them for feedback because the address doesn't exist. We were literally paying for AI credits so strangers could test stuff and ghost us.
3. 14 day trial was too long
14 days no credit card required sounded generous. In reality people signed up, forgot about it, never came back. We switched to 7 days + credit card required. It killed the tire kickers. The people who stayed were actually serious. But more importantly we finally knew who was on our platform. Real emails. Real people. Real feedback.
Every founder told us these changes would kill our growth. They didn't. They killed the noise.
Our MRR jumped after all three changes.
If you're a founder giving everything away because you're scared to charge you're not building a user base. You're funding tourists.
Anyone else been through this? What changed your conversion?good to hear other founders advices
Replies
Curatora
Re 1: “Cheap pricing kills trust.”
We started with $99; but put it down to $49 by now -> works, and thus fully aligned with your statement, even tho we come from a different angle:
I get the point, but for us higher pricing also meant way higher expectations. And as an early-stage startup (that's why this applied to us), that can be risky. People have a lot less patience for bugs or small issues if they’re paying more (and you don't have a relation to them yet).
So I’d say this only really works once the product is super stable and the value is clearly there. Otherwise, you’re just increasing pressure on yourself.
Re 3: Free trial length.
We currently have a 3-day trial, and honestly, it might just be too short. Especially in B2B. If there’s a weekend in between, the trial is basically gone before people really test anything.
We’re seeing cases where users sign up, don’t even create a single generation, and then churn.
So we’re thinking about switching to 7 days (so exactly what you've been sharing) to give people more time and a fair shot at actually seeing the value.
Still figuring it out, curious too how others handled this.
I feel like one of the most common struggles for founders is finding and implementing the best marketing strategy for their product. It's good to know that your team learned from its "mistakes" and managed to improve (doesn't happen so often!) :)
fascinating!
thank you so much for sharing :)
Flexprice
I think a lot of us start out too focused on getting users in the door, but at some point, we need to focus on getting real users. It sounds like you found that balance.
This mirrors exactly what we saw with ScrollScript. Cheap pricing attracted high volume, low intent. The moment we tightened the free tier the quality of feedback improved dramatically because the people still using it actually cared about the output.
The credit card on trial point is the one most founders resist the longest. But you're right, people who won't enter a card to try something they claim they want were never serious buyers. You're just delaying the inevitable while paying for their AI credits.
The trust signal from higher pricing is real too. We had users tell us directly that they almost didn't sign up because the price "seemed too low for what it does." That's a sign you're leaving money on the table, not being founder-friendly.