How do I decide what goes in the free tier and what sits behind the paywall?

It settles the freemium versus trial argument with numbers from 150 plus companies rather than opinion: freemium brings 33 percent more signups but converts at half the rate. That trade-off is the whole decision.

Freemium vs. Free Trial: How to Know Which One to Pick for Your SaaS Startup

From OpenView by Kristin Hillery 10 min read

• Free trials convert free-to-paid at roughly 14 percent, about twice freemium's 7 percent.
• Freemium generates about 33 percent more free accounts per website visitor than free trials.
• Median activation is around 20 percent for freemium versus 40 percent for free trials.
• Only 4 percent of freemium and 12 percent of free trial products ask for a card upfront.

Seven hybrid pricing patterns with named companies (GitHub, Shopify, Intercom, Zapier), plus Poyar's point that the enemy is not subscriptions, it is inflexible upfront commitments.

The state of usage-based pricing in SaaS

From Growth Unhinged by Kyle Poyar 12 min read

• Usage-based pricing adoption slipped from 46 to 41 percent year on year, with 17 percent testing it.
• Most usage-based businesses run a hybrid, not pure pay-as-you-go.
• Intercom's Fin charges $0.99 per successful resolution, pricing on the outcome.
• The real problem is not usage versus subscription, it is inflexible upfront commitments.

A full 0 to 100M ARR guide from an Indian company that lived it, covering acquisition, activation, retention, monetisation and the metrics for each. The best single India-built reference on self-serve.

The Revenue Growth Guide for Self-Serve SaaS Businesses

From Chargebee 45 min read

• 20 to 40 percent of all churn is involuntary, driven by failed payments rather than unhappiness.
• Companies going public hold net dollar retention above 110 percent.
• Help Scout users pay 143 percent of average revenue per customer after 23 billing cycles.
• Virality only compounds when the k factor is greater than 1.

Poyar replaces the sales funnel with a five stage new user journey (discover, start, activate, convert, scale) and attaches benchmark ranges to each. It is how you find out which stage is actually broken.

Your guide to PLG benchmarks

From Growth Unhinged by Kyle Poyar 10 min read

• Gartner data cited: only 5 to 6 percent of buying activity is spent meeting a vendor's reps.
• Product-led companies were 55 percent of respondents, up from 48 percent in 2020.
• Benchmarks drawn from 450+ software companies, from under $1M to $100M+ ARR.

A full session on structuring packaging tiers, which is the mechanical work behind deciding where free ends and paid starts. Delivered to an Indian SaaS founder audience, so the pricing points and buyer assumptions are the ones you actually face.

Crafting Your SaaS Pricing Strategy - SaaSBoomi

On Monetizely (SaaSBoomi session) by Ajit Ghuman 61 min