- Steven Cravotta
- Posts
- Freemium apps are dead
Freemium apps are dead
Hey there,
There's a pattern I keep seeing with founders who can’t get $5k MRR - some not even $1k MRR.
Their app works. Users download it. Some even stick around.
But revenue stays flat month after month, and they can't figure out why.
Nine times out of ten, I look at their setup and find the same thing:
Freemium.
Free tier, limited features, hope they upgrade eventually.
It feels like a generous move - lower the barrier to entry, build trust before asking for money.
What actually happens is users get comfortable with the free version, never feel the pressure to commit, and churn before they ever pull out a card.
So you're actually building a free product with a hope attached to it.
Founders printing right now run a hard paywall with a free trial gated behind a yearly commitment only.
Want to try the app?
Enter your card, start a 7-day trial on the yearly plan, get charged on day 7.
No soft option. No browsing indefinitely.
Someone willing to commit to a yearly plan already believes in the transformation enough to try.
That's a completely different user than someone who signed up out of curiosity and never felt the urgency to upgrade.
Math underneath it matters more than most founders realize too.
When you collect cash upfront on a yearly plan, you reinvest it into paid ads immediately.
That cycle compounds fast.
Freemium delays it indefinitely because you're waiting on monthly trickles from users who barely engaged.
With PuffCount, switching to a hard paywall with a yearly-only free trial took my conversion rate from 2% to 12% on the same traffic.
Same app. But a different pricing structure.
If you're still running freemium, you're making it easier for users to leave without paying.
Peace,
Steven