How valuable are free users?

Victor Giurgiu
3 replies
Hello indie hackers, Hope 2023 has been great for so far! I recently just hit 300 users for my startup Affistash.com, I decided around a week ago, that we will give full free access to all of the users, even though we had around 15 users paying for the paid plan. (We used to have 2 plans on the platform, a free & paid plan). So right now, the product is only going to generate revenue through our B2B activity, which means that in order to be able to attract companies to get listed on the platform we will need a big user base. I was wondering if I can get some more feedback on the approach, and I also wanted to know how valuable do you consider free users? What are some tips you guys have to maximise value of free users? Looking forward to see what you guys think :)

Replies

Yassin Bouacherine
The valuable ones are those willing to answer your survey about how helpful your product is daily. Does it provide everything they want compared to your competitors (if there are any)? Is it vital to their activity? How much does it contribute to their success? Basically, you gotta narrow it down to where you get to have enough data to be confident enough to turn off the free access to all of the users. If your tool truly contributes to helping those people to reach their goals and make revenue off of it, it's fair that you get your investment back on it. I did think of implementing a system that allows people to keep using the app for free if they answer a survey but then, again, some may just fill it out without really putting in the effort. You would have to manually manage all that. Hope it helps! Cheers
Victor Giurgiu
@jack95 Thanks for the advice Yassin, we are planning to start focusing more on gathering user feedback, we are also trying to get some customer interviews to see how we can improve the platform, so we will improve in that side for sure!
Manoj Radhakrishnan
As long as the free users are the super users who co-create with you in building a better product (with active feedback and suggestions) - please don't hesitate to have them on board