How do you decide what features should be free and what should be paid?
Let me start from the creator’s perspective:
I personally don’t have a product (apart from hiring people for creative work or offering personal consultations).
But as a creator, I constantly share content, insights, and information, value that helps me build trust (for free). Based on that perceived expertise, people eventually decide to work with me (a paid service).
So some things I share for free to eventually move toward a paid collaboration.
Personally, it’s sometimes hard to judge when I might be giving away too much for free.
And I assume it’s similarly tricky for builders.
You want users to try the product, but then comes the question of paid features, or a trial limited by time or usage.
How do you decide which parts of your product or service remain free, and which become paid?
When I share content publicly, I usually provide generalised advice. But when it comes to a specific case or a tailored strategy that requires a personal approach, that’s where it becomes paid.
Replies
For My Own Product, I’m keeping the core value free:
• Free product listing
• Same category-based visibility for everyone
• No need to pay just to be discovered
For revenue, I may later add optional paid promotion — for example, featured placements or ads at the top.
But the important part: paying should increase promotion, not remove the visibility of free users.
My rule is simple: Discovery stays free. Extra exposure can be paid.
For us the line drew itself: we charge for what costs us money. Every song is a paid call to a music model, so generation runs on credits. Everything around it is free: the library, the player, sharing a song with someone. New users get enough credits to hear their first song before any paywall, because nobody pays for an AI song they haven't heard.
That's a really good question, and I think every builder struggles with it.
For my screen recorder, Polished, I went with a simple approach: everything people actually need is free. They can record, get the automatic zoom and smooth cursor, add voice-over, and export their videos without paying anything.
The paid plan only adds extras that are nice to have but easy to live without, like removing the small watermark, longer recordings, and 4K export. Most people are perfectly happy on the free version, and those who use it more seriously, for client work or product demos, usually choose to upgrade.
For me, it felt fairer that way. People can fully use the product and decide for themselves whether the extras are worth it, rather than feeling pushed into paying.
I think your approach with content works the same way: the general value is free and builds trust, and the personal, tailored part is what people pay for.
usage limits seem easier to defend than feature walls, since people only pay once they've clearly gotten value. do paywalled features ever feel fair to users when the free tier was already doing the core job?
The line I use: anything that costs almost nothing to serve stays free, with no account. Things that cost real money every time someone uses them are paid. It turns the decision from a feeling into a rule, and "why is this paid?" always has a one-sentence answer.
Two more rules of thumb: let free users try the paid thing on a small scale instead of hitting a locked button, because seeing their own result sells it better than any pricing page. And never move something that was free behind the paywall later; that costs more trust than it earns.
Disclosure: I'm the maker of EveryApp, where that split is live: tools like https://everyapp.pro/merge-pdf are free with no sign-up, and building your own app is the paid part ($9.99/month).