Last week at BuddiesHR, we changed our free tier...
And I wasn’t ready for what happened next 🤯
A few weeks ago, my co-founder Fabien Pinel and I made a bold move:
We updated our free plan retroactively🥶
When we launched, our free tier was a key differentiator.
Very generous.
Way more than most competitors offered.
And it worked, it helped us acquire lots of users early on.
But eventually, every startup faces that decision.
Time to tighten things up.
We adjusted our free plan from “free up to 30 users” → “free up to 10 users.”
Still a solid offer.
If your team has 20 people, paying $40/month for 8 premium Slack apps is a no-brainer compared to what you spend on tools, SaaS, or even coffee.
We projected that we might convert ~5% of the free users.
Why?
1. A lot of people install Slack apps, then forget they ever did.
2. Others use the product only because it’s free, and churn the second they’re asked to pay.
So we rolled out the new terms to just 20% of our users (as a test)...
And guess what?
👉 We got a 10%+ conversion rate 🤯
June turned out to be one of our strongest months ever in terms of growth.
And here’s the kicker:
We’ve only rolled it out to 20% of users so far.
In July, we’re applying it to the remaining 80%...
Let’s just say, I’m feeling very optimistic for what’s coming 😄
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👋 Hey, I'm J.Y!
I'm the co-founder of BuddiesHR, the #1 Employee Engagement Software that lives in Slack.
I post about my journey and share what I've learned along the way.
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