Are we pricing out the exact users who actually love our product?

We looked at our conversion rates last month and panicked sign ups were high, but upgrades to our pro tier were almost flat. Our first instinct was to add more features to justify the price tag.

Then we jumped on calls with a few power users who were still on the free plan. Their response caught us off guard: We don't need more features; we just hit the paywall to early before we could prove the ROI to our team.

It made me realize that sometimes a low conversion rate isn't a feature gap; it's a pricing tier architecture problem.

How did you figure out the sweet spot for your first paid tier did you rely on usage data, customer budget feedback, or just trial and error?