When users drop off during setup do you offer discounts or fix the UX?

We made the classic mistake early on of emailing every canceled user a discount code assuming they left because of the price. Turns out, 80% of them never even configured their account settings or imported their data.

They didn't leave because it was too expensive; they left because the setup process felt like homework. Once we killed three mandatory onboarding steps and let them test the core feature instantly our early retention completely flipped.

If someone abandons your product on day one how do you figure out if it's a pricing issue or just a confusing onboarding flow?