Building a free plan that's actually useful — is this a good choice? Time will tell I guess.

Hey builders 👋,

We're launching AlertCamp next Tuesday — a campsite cancellation alert service for Canadian parks. Native iOS + Android, push notifications, 234 parks across Ontario / Parks Canada / BC.

While building the pricing, we kept hitting the same dilemma: every competitor in this space either has no free tier (Campnab) or expires after 10 lifetime notifications (Schnerp). Our free plan ("Essai") has ONE alert and slower scans (10–15 min) but unlimited notifications, forever, no credit card.

Internally we keep going back and forth on this:

- The argument for: a kid whose parents work shifts shouldn't lose every campsite to people who can refresh a page all day. Free + push is genuinely useful.

- The argument against: people who'd happily pay $3/month will use the free plan forever once they've set up their one alert.

For makers who've shipped freemium products: how did you decide where the free/paid line goes? Especially in a B2C category where the "job" is fully done by the free tier for most users.

(And if you're curious about the full pricing or the launch — happy to share, but mostly looking for the freemium-design conversation.)

Cheers,

Eric