We doubled our pricing and got more paying users

When we launched Starnus our competitors were charging $100+/month. So we thought let's undercut them. Start at $20. Make it a no brainer.

Signups were great. Payments? Almost zero.

Here's what actually changed our MRR:

1. Cheap pricing kills trust

At $20 people treated the product like a free tool. Sign up, poke around, leave. No urgency. No commitment. We raised to $49 starter and $184 pro and more people started paying. Not less. Higher price = higher perceived value. Founders don't want the cheapest tool. They want the one that looks like it works.

2. Free users are tourists

We had a generous free tier and it attracted the worst kind of users. People signing up with temporary emails, burning through credits, and disappearing. You can't even email them for feedback because the address doesn't exist. We were literally paying for AI credits so strangers could test stuff and ghost us.

3. 14 day trial was too long

14 days no credit card required sounded generous. In reality people signed up, forgot about it, never came back. We switched to 7 days + credit card required. It killed the tire kickers. The people who stayed were actually serious. But more importantly we finally knew who was on our platform. Real emails. Real people. Real feedback.

Every founder told us these changes would kill our growth. They didn't. They killed the noise.

Our MRR jumped after all three changes.

If you're a founder giving everything away because you're scared to charge you're not building a user base. You're funding tourists.

Anyone else been through this? What changed your conversion?good to hear other founders advices