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Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how do you treat free users of your product?

4 points by jainvivek ↗ HN
Future buyers or freeloaders? Brand ambassadors or resource-hoggers?

While there are feature/usage/support limitations on them, should time-since-registered or past purchase history also be a factor in servicing them?

Categorizing them can bring some actionable insights I guess.

15 comments

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JohnFen
Personally, I don't do "free tiers" for my commercial offerings. I do free trials instead. I think that its important not to set false expectations right from the start, and free tiers almost always set false expectations.
jainvivek
I acknowledge your choice. With a lot of discussion recently, and some first hand-experience, I realized there could be a way to make free work. Might need experimentation, but should be possible.
ameliap24
Free users are either future customers or advocates. It helps to categorize them based on their behavior rather than just how long they have been using the product. Look for patterns like how often they engage and which features they use. Engaged free users are more likely to convert or recommend your product. If some users are not adding value, guide them toward conversion with upsells or incentives. A referral program can also unlock value from free users. The goal is to balance engagement with sustainability, giving value to those who might become paying customers while minimizing the drain on resources.
jainvivek
"The goal is to balance engagement with sustainability", superbly summed up.
skwee357
I don’t do “free”. Free is bad for everyone: the paying customers, me, and eventually the feee customers as well
jainvivek
I used to think the same. But now I know there are many cases where free can be good if approached rightly.
skwee357
Mind sharing some use cases? You can email me (email in profile/website) if you prefer not to share publicly.
jainvivek
1. When product is new, those users can provide critical feedback to achieve PMF. 2. If product is listed on a platform like Android/iOS, installation numbers work as social validation. 3. They will be more inclined towards referral marketing for incentives like extra credits.

We had an interesting discussion on Reddit yesterday about the same https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/1g3e211/how_do_yo...

vijitdhingra
I love them! Free users are still validation that there is a demand for what you’re building. Ofc it might still be the case that most people aren’t willing to pay for your product, but you’re only going to find that out once you keep building.

This is exactly my approach with https://rockyai.me/ - chrome extension that lets you chat with any webpage using LLMs. I have zero paid users but a lot of my friends love the product so that’s still very satisfying!

realty_geek
Are you able to get ai summaries of hn articles for free? I'm creating a tool for hn that could do with that.
jainvivek
I agree. But then there remains a doubt if product is only perceived as good-to-have, meaning less/no monetization potential.

Might be suitable for side projects, but not for full time entrepreneurship commitment.

vijitdhingra
True I get that. I think even for full time founders if you’re seeing crazy adoption by unpaid customers, then there’s something there. Once you have a bunch of free users it’s easy to expand into something that users are willing to pay for then to do that from scratch.

You don’t wanna be in a place where you’re seeing low signups overall and low usage even by free customers. It’s nice to be cautious of that but again all of these metrics are relative to what stage your company is at.

jainvivek
I am in agreement.

BTW cool extension. Gave it a try, and it provided a nice summary of this page as below.

"Overall, the community suggests that free users can be valuable, particularly for product feedback and potential future conversion, but caution is advised regarding long-term sustainability and expectations."