💰 Pricing
🌐 Website
📱 Social
This playbook requires the following signals:
Monitored Signals
1. Why should I care about freemium tier launches?
Here’s why it’s a big deal:
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2. Examples of companies who launched freemium tiers
Here are a few examples of companies that have used freemium to dominate their markets:
MASV in September 2024 strategically introduced a freemium tier. Previously, their entry-level offering was pay-as-you-go at $0.25 per GB. With the new freemium tier, users now get 15 GB per month for free, with additional usage charged at the same rate – a clever shift in their positioning. If a user consumes the full 15 GB allotment, it costs MASV just $3.75/month. This represents a small customer acquisition cost (CAC) with the potential to significantly boost revenue.
Carta, an equity management software provider, introduced a free “Launch” tier early on. Their tier structure clearly maps to the stages of a company’s growth. The Launch tier is available to companies with up to 25 stakeholders and up to $1 million raised, which quickly excludes startups that have reached the pre-seed stage and beyond. However, this offering effectively addresses a crucial pain point during the early stages of company formation, and serves as a powerful onramp.
Noloco’s February 2025 launch of a “Free Forever” plan marked a strategic GTM shift, removing price barriers for new users. Previously, pricing started at $39/month (annual plan); now, the free tier opens up developers and small teams to test Noloco’s core features with no upfront risk. This bottom-up motion is ideal for developer-led adoption and internal piloting.
3. How to monitor competitors for freemium launches
You can't counter a move you don't see. To stay ahead, you need a system for tracking competitor pricing changes. Here are several ways to monitor for freemium launches, from simple manual checks to powerful automation.
Zimt is the go-to competitor monitoring tool for B2B SaaS companies. We have over 35 competitor playbooks you can launch on autopilot, including one designed specifically for this scenario. Activating the playbook allows you to:
Monitor Competitor's Pricing: Automatically scan for changes.
Get Instant Alerts: Receive real-time notifications in your inbox or Slack.
Get Playbooks: Know how to react with updated playbooks.
If you're not using Zimt, you can use manual checks, Google Alerts, or generic page monitors like Visualping, but be prepared for the trade-off: significant manual effort to filter noisy alerts and find the signals these tools miss.
4. Playbook Response Options
4.1 Differentiate on value and target audience
ⓘ Best for: When your product is genuinely designed for professional, high-stakes use cases where reliability, deep features, and dedicated support are paramount. A competitor's free tier aggressively expands their user base, but often at the cost of depth or dedicated service. This option focuses on drawing a clear line between their free, broad offering and your solution's professional-grade value, targeting businesses that require robust and dependable tools. | ||
Goal: Clearly position your solution as the professional-grade choice for serious businesses, differentiating against the competitor's free tier by highlighting reliability, support, and security. | ||
Strategic Rationale: Free tiers often come with inherent limitations in support, security, and advanced features. This strategy capitalizes on those limitations, educating the market on the "hidden costs of free" for professional use, and emphasizing your product's superior long-term value and fit for business-critical needs. |
Develop the "Free vs. Professional" Narrative.
Craft a clear narrative that positions their free plan as suitable for hobbyists or individuals, while positioning your solution as the professional-grade choice for serious businesses that require reliability, support, and security. Consider benchmarking on the following values:
Value | Example: Cost of using free solution (i.e. manual scheduling) vs Calendly for Sales |
|---|---|
Time saved | 15-30 minutes per scheduled meeting (assuming an average of 2-3 additional emails) |
Risk reduced | 5x higher chance of meeting never getting scheduled; 28% increase in no-shows |
Revenue increase or cost avoidance | 200% of unrealised pipeline value (for €5,000+ ACVs) |
Scalability | Manual scheduling grows linearly, increasing calendar admin and context switching |
Support | Rescheduling and cancellations re-start scheduling process |
Note: if concrete values are not known, work from hypotheses in order to further validate. | |
Create a "Hidden Costs of Free" Content Piece.
Publish a blog post or one-pager detailing the hidden costs of "free" tools (e.g., lack of support, security risks, time wasted on workarounds, time spent on maintenance, limited features).
Update Battle Cards to Sell Against "Free".
Train the sales team on how to discover the prospect's actual needs and pivot the conversation from price to value, TCO, and the risks of using a non-professional tool.
Launch a Marketing Campaign Targeting Senior Decision-Makers.
Run a digital ad and content syndication campaign focused on the themes of ROI, security, and compliance, targeting titles (e.g., Director, VP) who are less sensitive to price and more focused on business outcomes.
4.2 Launch a time-limited free trial or pilot program
ⓘ Best For: When your product's value becomes clearly evident through hands-on experience, and you need to lower the initial barrier to entry to demonstrate that value directly to a broader audience. A competitor's free tier creates a strong pull for new users. This option directly addresses that pull by offering a taste of your product's premium value without immediate financial commitment. It allows prospects to experience your unique benefits, turning curious users into qualified leads and, ultimately, paying customers. | ||
Goal: Lower the initial barrier to entry and allow prospects to directly experience your product's value, thereby converting trial users into paying customers. | ||
Strategic Rationale: While a "free forever" model is powerful, a well-executed free trial can be highly effective. It allows customers to validate your unique differentiators and the superior quality of your solution directly, creating a compelling reason to convert once the trial period ends. This also helps qualify leads by their engagement. |
Define the Terms and Scope of the Trial.
Decide on the trial length (e.g., 14 or 30 days) or usage limit (e.g., tokens), and whether it will include all features or a limited subset. Longer trials don’t outperform shorter ones, and both convert about twice as well as feature‑ or seat‑restricted free trials.
Implement the Trial Sign-Up Flow.
Create a frictionless sign-up workflow on the website and configure the product to handle trial account creation and expiration. Notion's sign up flow (below) is a fantastic example of setting up trial users for success.
Create an Automated Trial Nurture Sequence.
Develop a sequence of emails to guide trial users, highlight key features, and encourage them to convert to a paid plan. See Beehiiv's Creating a Lead Nurturing Email Sequence examples.
Develop a "Trial-to-Paid" Sales Playbook.
Create a process for the sales team to follow up with engaged trial users, qualify them, and convert them to paying customers. Trials without sales involvement convert at 4%, while those with a salesperson reach 15%.
Promote the New Free Trial Offering.
Announce and heavily promote the new free trial across all marketing channels to drive sign-ups. For example, Notion's campaign targeting startups utilised multiple channels and differing messages – likely to test which messaging performs best.
4.3 Introduce a low-cost, feature-limited plan
ⓘ Best For: When you need a new, accessible entry point that appeals to price-sensitive customers, bridging the gap between "free" and your current paid offerings, or when your product has a clear "gateway" feature. A competitor's free tier captures a wide audience, but often leaves a void for users who need slightly more than free, but aren't ready for a full professional investment. This option bridges that gap by offering a compelling, nominal-cost tier, designed to capture market share from those who value specific features over outright "free". | ||
Goal: Introduce a new, accessible, low-cost plan to capture price-sensitive customers and create a clear upgrade path from "free" alternatives. | ||
Strategic Rationale: This strategy aims to capture the segment of users who outgrow the free tier but are not yet ready for a premium investment. It provides a clearer pathway for monetization than a pure free trial, and it allows you to showcase a subset of your higher-tier value at a very accessible price point. |
Analyze Their Free Tier and Identify a Value Gap.
Deeply analyze their free plan's limitations. Identify a small set of high-value features you could offer for a nominal price (e.g., $10-$20/month) that would be compelling.
Model the Financial Impact and Cannibalization Risk.
Model the potential revenue from the new tier and, more importantly, the risk of existing customers downgrading from higher-priced plans. A back-of-the-napkin look at differing scenarios can be enough to orientate. Be sure to mark down your hypotheses for each scenario.
Create the New Plan in Billing and Entitlement Systems.
Work with engineering to create the new plan, gate the appropriate features, and add it to your billing system.
Update the Website Pricing Page and Marketing Materials.
Redesign the pricing page to include the new low-cost tier and update all relevant marketing materials to reflect the new entry point.
Announce the New, More Accessible Offering.
Consider a soft-launch, with direct outreach to your target audience, or run a small ad campaign, to gauge test. Iterate based on feedback. Launch a campaign to announce your new, more accessible entry-level plan, positioning it as a response to market demand for more flexible options.
4.4 Match and launch a competing freemium tier
ⓘ Best For: When your market is clearly shifting to Product-Led Growth (PLG) as the dominant acquisition model, and direct matching is necessary to avoid significant market share loss and maintain long-term relevance. A competitor's successful freemium launch may signal a fundamental shift in market acquisition. This option is about making a decisive strategic pivot to match their model, transforming your entire business around a Product-Led Growth (PLG) approach. However, such a pivot is a complex undertaking; if the product and Go-To-Market are not appropriately re-architected, a freemium model can quickly backfire, proving disastrous. It risks attracting the 'wrong' sort of user – those who expect extensive features and support for minimal to no revenue, potentially consuming significant customer support focus and resources. It's a significant undertaking, but it positions you to compete directly for the rapidly expanding free user base. | ||
Goal: Shift your business model to Product-Led Growth (PLG) by launching a competing freemium tier, directly matching the competitor's acquisition strategy. | ||
Strategic Rationale: This is a major business model transformation. It requires significant investment and internal re-architecture, but if the market fundamentally pivots to PLG as the primary acquisition channel, matching it becomes essential for long-term survival and growth. It allows you to compete directly for top-of-funnel users. |
Secure Executive Buy-in for a PLG Pivot.
This is a business model transformation. Present a comprehensive plan to the board/execs detailing the costs, risks, and potential rewards of shifting to a PLG/freemium model.
Create a Cross-Functional PLG Team.
Appoint a leader and assemble a dedicated team – ideally across Product, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, and Support to own the freemium initiative.
Re-Architect the Product for a Self-Service Experience.
Begin the significant work of redesigning the user onboarding, creating in-app upgrade paths, and ensuring the product can be adopted without human touch.
Redesign the Customer Support Model.
Consider how the future of Support might change. Design a new support model that can handle a high volume of free users, relying on documentation, community forums, and (dare we say) chatbots to scale effectively.
Overhaul the GTM and Sales Compensation Models.
Redesign the marketing funnel around user sign-ups (not leads) and create new sales compensation plans based on "Product Qualified Leads" (PQLs) and conversions from free to paid.
A note on volume.
You will need to have a healthy funnel, to convert a meaningful amount of users from free to paid. This means increasing your leads through paid channels (e.g. ads) or organic channels (e.g. SEO). Put bluntly, free trials need to be fed volume. How much volume? Below are conversion benchmarks for calculating.
Good | Great | |
|---|---|---|
Freemium (self-serve) | 3-5% | 6-8% |
Freemium (sales-assist) | 5-7% | 10-15% |
Reverse trial | 7-11% | 14-21% |
Free trial | 8-12% | 15-25% |
Source: OpenView Product Benchmarks