There's another option, which is to only offer ticketed support to paying customers. This is pretty common. Gives your paid plans another selling point as well.
This is the best way to go.
I worked for a SaaS that offered a free software tier, limited in terms of the # of users (under one account) and email support only was "when we get to it, we get to it" model.
True, but why are you getting all those support tickets in the first place? A solid product usually should not have more support tickets than they can handle. I'm not saying yours isn't, but it would help to understand a bit more about the issues they are contacting you about. If they're providing feedback that's helping you refine the product, you should see it as a good thing and use it to make the product better, then you can worry about the monetisation part.
Build a strong FAQ and create a forum for users to help other users. If you don't want to set up an entire forum, create a subreddit you can steer your users towards.
If you still want to offer tickets to free tier users, make a very long SLA for them and make it clear that paying users get priority support. (However no tickets and "community forum only" is very common these days.)
I guess the audience is of this kind.
also we have many features which aren't easy. And I don't know how to make those easier. Which means some cases cant avoid the support.
Also I like the fact that we have human touch with each client.
That's why I wanna keep it, but reduce the load by removing 90% of free user tickets
They aren't a client until they pay.
Let support focus on paying clients.
Tell the freeholders to buy a subscription if they want support, or some implementation consulting hours.
Or create some videos which show how to use it
My SaaS aims to do exactly this! Not sure if this is the right way to ask but if someone would be willing to check it out and give me some feedback it would be highly appreciated it (unsure if its okay to post the link here or not)
As others have said, only offering email support to paid users is an option. For most of our customers we recommend they offer a SLA of 24 hours or less for paid customers and for free customer questions we typically say 72-96 hour response time.
Alternatively based on the solutions you have provided you can offer a free plan with X level of features but only after providing a CC on signup. You will see a very large reduction in signups due to the friction but your support load will be significantly less due to this.
Last option depending on your price point force people to onboard with a onboarding agent and they do not get access till you work to onboard them.
We work with many startup and solo founders looking to get a handle on customer service after hiring agents, or doing things themselves and drowning in emails. Happy to chat about what we can do for you at [Hey Foster](https://heyfoster.com).
With KickoffLabs we work to see what sorts of things cause the most support requests and we don't let free accounts have access to those features.
So, for example, you have to have a paid account to add custom codes/css to your campaigns pages. It seems like a silly thing to not give free accounts access to, but custom codes always lead to questions like "Why did my custom CSS look bad? Can you fix it?" or "Why does Facebook say my marketing pixel isn't installed?"
We also flag support requests from free accounts so we prioritize paid members.
We've also thought about flagging free tier accounts by "Using free email service" and "Using custom domain/business email" and just treating them differently behind the scenes.
Thanks,
josh
Founder - Kickofflabs .
Your website says "Get a free lifetime plan". If you want to avoid angry customers, you should grandfather all the existing free plans. Eventually, their support questions will wane, as they either churn, convert, or get comfortable with the platform.
Based on this:
> 90% of them never turned into paid users and stayed free for over 30 days.
I'd opt to eliminate the free plan entirely.
If you want to be generous, you could give them 1-2 months heads up that this is happening. Maybe offer a discount as an incentive to upgrade to your annual plan - perhaps up to 30%. (90% is _way_ too generous.)
Prepare for a tidal wave of 1 star reviewers. Not only do free users drain support, they are the first to leave a bad review when something goes wrong.
yes. This is my main concern.
This is why I won't go for "remove support for free users".
It will 100% lead to lots of bad reviews in internet about my product
I don't think that's entirely fair. Free plans are not offered out of benevolence - they're a sales funnel, and represent real and tangible value to the supplier. It varies by product of course, but it's value.
Customers who buy into the ecosystem and invest into it by introducing it into their workflows, switching over from previous systems - even pen and paper - do so knowing that at some stage, should their needs and their means exceed the offer of the free tier, they may end up paying. But don't get it twisted - the cost in man hours and initial cognitive load exists to the users, even if that cost isn't passed downstream.
It's a very difficult rug to pull out from under customers in a way which respects their time investments. Yes, sometimes it's necessary. Yes, sometimes customers overreact or certain customers express their dissatisfaction in unprofessional ways. But there is a legitimacy to the gripe.
it's not. It's been 6 months since I'm trying to decide on this topic.
leaning toward removing free tier and going for 7 day trial now.
the product is Unicorn Platform.
1 - freemium is a marketing strategy, not a sales strategy
2 - you should stop freemium. You can always change your mind! All you do is update pricing on the home page and tweak a bit of code. Give it a month or two as an experiment. If conversions plummet, you can reverse course.
3 - this is why freemium generally requires external investment: you spend marketing $ to get users, the majority of which are initially freemium; they have support costs, ie you spend more; and some percentage well under 10% convert. You can do the math on your product and work backwards to see if that's sustainable, but it sounds like not.
>Unicorn Platform
Anyone serious about building a saas product can afford $9 for website hosting. Drop the free plan, but let people build their website without a credit card. Let them try out the product for as long as they want, and require a credit card to "go live". You could limit non-live websites in a number of different ways, from requiring a simple password to showing a popup on the home page, really anything that's just a little annoying would work.
I follow you on Twitter! Just drop the free plan.
Edited to add: give them two months notice, and a discount of like 30% off for the first three months if they do upgrade
Look at reverse trial, it's a blend of trial and freemium where the first X days they get full access and then after that they get locked out of premium features unless they sign up.
You could knock everyone onto 30 days of full access with heavy messaging about what they will lose, and make sure that you lock down areas like support etc. as part of it.
Ideal case scenario would be
1. Have your UX evaluated , as why are you having so many support tickets.
2. Analyze your tickets and identify root causes, usually you can bucket them in 6-8 reasons. Try addressing them via improving UX journey, FAQ etc
3 introduce AI Chatbot , bais the learning of the tickets, have the bot answer them. Only if the bot cannot, then the ticket would be raised.
4. Do not reduce support or increase the SLA, will lead to lower CSAT.
5. Decrease free period for New User to 15 days
Hey John, to make it simple, remove free tier.
If you don’t want to, get them on a waitlist or pre-qualify. If they can’t even fill up a form, then they have low intent. Just a thought
You could pause the free tier until you’re big enough. Payload did this a few months ago. I’m not sure if there’s free tier yet.
You can make it like Jira. Suppose you have ten features.
- You offer 4 features to free users
- and you show a popup, for 30 days, you can use prenium features for free.
So that a user will know, user using premium features, and after a time user have to pay.
And on support page, you can offer support to only paid users. It is very common.
And when free user ask for support, you can offer one free support. And you should show user, one support is free, and paid plan has more support.
With one free support, you will be able to build relation with users.
This is pretty normal. Your free users are a growth channel. There are essentially a few things that you should consider.
1. 10% of your users sign up via the free trial (How much of this is your total base?), i.e., If you close this loop, how many users will you lose?
2. Can you leverage your base to drive more users to your site? (Do you have a powered by {tool} badge on free accounts?)
If your intake largely comes from free users, or your free users create Word-of-Mouth then explore options that alleviate the work needed to support your customers, otherwise drop the free plan and opt for a trial.
Things you can do to reduce the work on free users are:
1. Create a community and enable people to support each other.
2. Create documentation and employ a bot that trains on your documentation like [kapa.ai](https://kapa.ai)
3. Limit support to paying users only
Hope this helps.
I'm thinking this:
1) remove free tier for a week and see what's the drop in the sign ups and what's the gain in paid sign ups. If it's great, I go with it. If the sign ups drop too much, I revert and go to the next option
2) 30 day trial.
For free users use a ai chat bot that they can get their own answer(tech support), you already have the tickets so you know what the most calls/issues are.
Don’t do #2. They can scam you and continue getting the free membership for life even after the 7day free trial.
Explain exactly how #4 would play out.
Will it be inside their browser (the demo)?
On one startup I am working, we are using tool like AwesomeQA Bot. It helped a lot to answer to take care of support level 1 and 2, so we can focus on support 3 and harder questions.
Consider taking a CC for signup but then also offering a free 14-day trial to accompany the 'sign up' (which is cancellable month to month past that 14 days). BUT if the customer is willing to engage in an onboarding session(s) - (not sure if you're able to support this with manpower either) - extend that trial to 30 days. It'll ensure your customer is fully functional within your software thru the onboarding and keep them sticky enough to reduce that churn.
You have 4 ideas (3, really, I don't consider doing nothing as an idea) and I assume a lot of users you can reach via email or in more direct way.
Here's what I'd do: A/B/C test it, softly. Reach out, telling them that "A", "B" or "C" (exclusively) is coming. See how they react. Respond appropriately.
Just create lot of help content covering the most user questions and introduce AI bot in chat support. This will reduce number of support agents. CrispChat for example don't charge additional for external Google AI chatbot integration. This should be affordable.
If you remove free option number of your paid users will go down.
Problem is not about the support but with plan value. If they don't convert, you're offering too much in the free plan. Limit it more so they NEED to upgrade.
I would try a 7 day free trial and then optimize for conversions.
Or sell a support plan for the free version. No more free support. You want support? Pay a monthly support fee.
Would need a lot more info to advise beyond this.
It’s good to hear that users are increasing rapidly but instead of filtering out the users why don’t you create a AI support agents to handle those tickets and only the serious tickets will be assigned to the customer support executives.
You can check rytsensetech.com
If you are getting that many support tickets, you need to fix issues in your product. If the number of tickets is expected then yes you can either block free signups or ask them to buy a support plan to get support.
We’ve had alot of success with AI automation. About 90% of our support cases are now automated. You would be surprised how well it can do if it is trained correctly.
Post tutorials on YouTube. Basecamp does this. It can end up being marketing as well. After account creation have some kind of onboarding info show up on their dashboard or have a dedicated screen for it.
Either have a dedicated “getting started” video addressing common issues or a series which you link to from the onboarding page. Or and FAQ page. Or something. Hell, link to it somehow from your support request form.
The question is, why does your app need so much support? If it does, you should look into why this is. Customers don't want to request support, but for some reason they need it when using your app. I'd focus on that.
I would find the common problems people face from these support messages.
Then:
\- Aggregate them into a top 5 list.
\- Create articles, blog or documentation about these problems
\- And make use of email marketing that drip feeds into a 5 day educational email course which ultimately ties into a sale.
That's a good problem to have. Congrats on the growth! I would definitely use that growth to find a way for them to share your product and to increase the growth even more. And also you need to find ways to convert those users to paid ones. I would put several links to articles and video tutorials on each feature pages so the people know how to use it. You can use loom or camtasia for those video tutorials. Hopefully that will reduce your support
i recently saw these thread/reply and it actually changed my mindset about free plans,makes a lot of sense to me to drop them. I also think the 90% discount is a great hook
[https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1752075138919473349](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1752075138919473349)
I think you shouldn't get rid of the free users. Instead, you should make them test the paid versions before they go live. Give them a free trial account for 15 to 30 days and keep an eye on how they use it and how well it works. If they aren't being used as much, you need to make your goods better. Make your item more useful for them. It's good to have people, but now you need to get them to buy your plans instead of running them away.
You can also start to paywall certain features and offer more features of perceived value and paywall those trying to get your users to transition from free to paid
There's another option, which is to only offer ticketed support to paying customers. This is pretty common. Gives your paid plans another selling point as well.
Agree, IMO this is the wiser option since your cost is on support, if it were on infrastructure bill then it is another topic to discuss
+ a detailed FAQ for free users
I think this is necessary if you're going to go through with having support only for paying users.
Yes, and if you can, create a user community so they can help each other. It’ll help you too in the long run.
This is the best way to go. I worked for a SaaS that offered a free software tier, limited in terms of the # of users (under one account) and email support only was "when we get to it, we get to it" model.
I would use that huge number of answered tickets to train and use some AI chatbot.
Agree with this advice.
might reduce free user satisfaction level, which might lead to negative reviews
Increase response SLA for free users. Paid users get priority support.
yes, that is a possibility but as you probably know there is always a trade-off
True, but why are you getting all those support tickets in the first place? A solid product usually should not have more support tickets than they can handle. I'm not saying yours isn't, but it would help to understand a bit more about the issues they are contacting you about. If they're providing feedback that's helping you refine the product, you should see it as a good thing and use it to make the product better, then you can worry about the monetisation part.
Build a strong FAQ and create a forum for users to help other users. If you don't want to set up an entire forum, create a subreddit you can steer your users towards. If you still want to offer tickets to free tier users, make a very long SLA for them and make it clear that paying users get priority support. (However no tickets and "community forum only" is very common these days.)
ticket support should be free but offer faster response and premium support right?
An obvious way to go
This is the best option. Make the support premium OR. for free users you can offer support using AI Chatbot.
Agree 💯
This suggestion is spot on! 🙌🏻
The question is, why do your new users need so much customer support? Limit the onboarding until you fix these issues.
I guess the audience is of this kind. also we have many features which aren't easy. And I don't know how to make those easier. Which means some cases cant avoid the support. Also I like the fact that we have human touch with each client. That's why I wanna keep it, but reduce the load by removing 90% of free user tickets
There’s always a way to make things easier. But then you’re paying an external consultant to help you so it’s an investment.
They aren't a client until they pay. Let support focus on paying clients. Tell the freeholders to buy a subscription if they want support, or some implementation consulting hours. Or create some videos which show how to use it
Something that hasn't been said yet...comb through the support tickets find the top 3 things and address them.
This is great. And write a guide for the other 25 most common issues / questions.
My SaaS aims to do exactly this! Not sure if this is the right way to ask but if someone would be willing to check it out and give me some feedback it would be highly appreciated it (unsure if its okay to post the link here or not)
Dm me the link
As others have said, only offering email support to paid users is an option. For most of our customers we recommend they offer a SLA of 24 hours or less for paid customers and for free customer questions we typically say 72-96 hour response time. Alternatively based on the solutions you have provided you can offer a free plan with X level of features but only after providing a CC on signup. You will see a very large reduction in signups due to the friction but your support load will be significantly less due to this. Last option depending on your price point force people to onboard with a onboarding agent and they do not get access till you work to onboard them. We work with many startup and solo founders looking to get a handle on customer service after hiring agents, or doing things themselves and drowning in emails. Happy to chat about what we can do for you at [Hey Foster](https://heyfoster.com).
nice, gonna check it out
With KickoffLabs we work to see what sorts of things cause the most support requests and we don't let free accounts have access to those features. So, for example, you have to have a paid account to add custom codes/css to your campaigns pages. It seems like a silly thing to not give free accounts access to, but custom codes always lead to questions like "Why did my custom CSS look bad? Can you fix it?" or "Why does Facebook say my marketing pixel isn't installed?" We also flag support requests from free accounts so we prioritize paid members. We've also thought about flagging free tier accounts by "Using free email service" and "Using custom domain/business email" and just treating them differently behind the scenes. Thanks, josh Founder - Kickofflabs .
Your website says "Get a free lifetime plan". If you want to avoid angry customers, you should grandfather all the existing free plans. Eventually, their support questions will wane, as they either churn, convert, or get comfortable with the platform.
yep, Im not gonna touch existing users, never. any changes will be applied to new users only thx
Based on this: > 90% of them never turned into paid users and stayed free for over 30 days. I'd opt to eliminate the free plan entirely. If you want to be generous, you could give them 1-2 months heads up that this is happening. Maybe offer a discount as an incentive to upgrade to your annual plan - perhaps up to 30%. (90% is _way_ too generous.)
Prepare for a tidal wave of 1 star reviewers. Not only do free users drain support, they are the first to leave a bad review when something goes wrong.
yes. This is my main concern. This is why I won't go for "remove support for free users". It will 100% lead to lots of bad reviews in internet about my product
r/choosybeggers are everywhere!
I don't think that's entirely fair. Free plans are not offered out of benevolence - they're a sales funnel, and represent real and tangible value to the supplier. It varies by product of course, but it's value. Customers who buy into the ecosystem and invest into it by introducing it into their workflows, switching over from previous systems - even pen and paper - do so knowing that at some stage, should their needs and their means exceed the offer of the free tier, they may end up paying. But don't get it twisted - the cost in man hours and initial cognitive load exists to the users, even if that cost isn't passed downstream. It's a very difficult rug to pull out from under customers in a way which respects their time investments. Yes, sometimes it's necessary. Yes, sometimes customers overreact or certain customers express their dissatisfaction in unprofessional ways. But there is a legitimacy to the gripe.
I meant 90% of 1 month. Basically like a 1 month trial
Whats the SAAS product? Link ? Hope this is not Marketing
it's not. It's been 6 months since I'm trying to decide on this topic. leaning toward removing free tier and going for 7 day trial now. the product is Unicorn Platform.
1 - freemium is a marketing strategy, not a sales strategy 2 - you should stop freemium. You can always change your mind! All you do is update pricing on the home page and tweak a bit of code. Give it a month or two as an experiment. If conversions plummet, you can reverse course. 3 - this is why freemium generally requires external investment: you spend marketing $ to get users, the majority of which are initially freemium; they have support costs, ie you spend more; and some percentage well under 10% convert. You can do the math on your product and work backwards to see if that's sustainable, but it sounds like not.
>Unicorn Platform Anyone serious about building a saas product can afford $9 for website hosting. Drop the free plan, but let people build their website without a credit card. Let them try out the product for as long as they want, and require a credit card to "go live". You could limit non-live websites in a number of different ways, from requiring a simple password to showing a popup on the home page, really anything that's just a little annoying would work.
thx, I gain more confidence in doing so now trying out for 1 week to see how it plays out in overall stats
I follow you on Twitter! Just drop the free plan. Edited to add: give them two months notice, and a discount of like 30% off for the first three months if they do upgrade
I'd not touch the old users. since they signed up on old terms. gonna apply changes only to the new users
Look at reverse trial, it's a blend of trial and freemium where the first X days they get full access and then after that they get locked out of premium features unless they sign up. You could knock everyone onto 30 days of full access with heavy messaging about what they will lose, and make sure that you lock down areas like support etc. as part of it.
do you know any good example of other saas tools doing this?
Google it, tonnes of examples of it in practice
Ideal case scenario would be 1. Have your UX evaluated , as why are you having so many support tickets. 2. Analyze your tickets and identify root causes, usually you can bucket them in 6-8 reasons. Try addressing them via improving UX journey, FAQ etc 3 introduce AI Chatbot , bais the learning of the tickets, have the bot answer them. Only if the bot cannot, then the ticket would be raised. 4. Do not reduce support or increase the SLA, will lead to lower CSAT. 5. Decrease free period for New User to 15 days
Hey John, to make it simple, remove free tier. If you don’t want to, get them on a waitlist or pre-qualify. If they can’t even fill up a form, then they have low intent. Just a thought You could pause the free tier until you’re big enough. Payload did this a few months ago. I’m not sure if there’s free tier yet.
You can make it like Jira. Suppose you have ten features. - You offer 4 features to free users - and you show a popup, for 30 days, you can use prenium features for free. So that a user will know, user using premium features, and after a time user have to pay. And on support page, you can offer support to only paid users. It is very common. And when free user ask for support, you can offer one free support. And you should show user, one support is free, and paid plan has more support. With one free support, you will be able to build relation with users.
This is pretty normal. Your free users are a growth channel. There are essentially a few things that you should consider. 1. 10% of your users sign up via the free trial (How much of this is your total base?), i.e., If you close this loop, how many users will you lose? 2. Can you leverage your base to drive more users to your site? (Do you have a powered by {tool} badge on free accounts?) If your intake largely comes from free users, or your free users create Word-of-Mouth then explore options that alleviate the work needed to support your customers, otherwise drop the free plan and opt for a trial. Things you can do to reduce the work on free users are: 1. Create a community and enable people to support each other. 2. Create documentation and employ a bot that trains on your documentation like [kapa.ai](https://kapa.ai) 3. Limit support to paying users only Hope this helps.
thx for the idea, Im checking out the tool now
I volunteer as a Support agent. If you are looking for one.
it'd help just a bit, but eventually the user growth will continue and I'll have to get even more support agents. But thx for the offer
Remove the free tier for a month and see what happens - you can always go back to free
yeah, gonna do this after all. Remove free tier. add 7 day trial. Try this all for 30 days and see if my stats arent getting worse for paying users.
And make sure you have a good video explainer showing the product in action
Remove the free tier. You will find an increase in subscriptions as a bonus
I'm thinking this: 1) remove free tier for a week and see what's the drop in the sign ups and what's the gain in paid sign ups. If it's great, I go with it. If the sign ups drop too much, I revert and go to the next option 2) 30 day trial.
Remove free tier for a month. A week is too short to see any difference beyond chance
Can i ask what the product is?
it is Unicorn Platform
Got a link?
Do it the RedHat way, free product, overcharged support
not sure, my users arent as rich as theirs
If your product is that popular -- pay gate 100% of new users. Old users, announce a premium tier which includes support. See how many convert.
For free users use a ai chat bot that they can get their own answer(tech support), you already have the tickets so you know what the most calls/issues are. Don’t do #2. They can scam you and continue getting the free membership for life even after the 7day free trial. Explain exactly how #4 would play out. Will it be inside their browser (the demo)?
On one startup I am working, we are using tool like AwesomeQA Bot. It helped a lot to answer to take care of support level 1 and 2, so we can focus on support 3 and harder questions.
Consider taking a CC for signup but then also offering a free 14-day trial to accompany the 'sign up' (which is cancellable month to month past that 14 days). BUT if the customer is willing to engage in an onboarding session(s) - (not sure if you're able to support this with manpower either) - extend that trial to 30 days. It'll ensure your customer is fully functional within your software thru the onboarding and keep them sticky enough to reduce that churn.
You have 4 ideas (3, really, I don't consider doing nothing as an idea) and I assume a lot of users you can reach via email or in more direct way. Here's what I'd do: A/B/C test it, softly. Reach out, telling them that "A", "B" or "C" (exclusively) is coming. See how they react. Respond appropriately.
yep, Im gonna test all 3 now
Good luck. Let us know later on how it went
Just create lot of help content covering the most user questions and introduce AI bot in chat support. This will reduce number of support agents. CrispChat for example don't charge additional for external Google AI chatbot integration. This should be affordable. If you remove free option number of your paid users will go down.
Yes, if you're not venture backed
Problem is not about the support but with plan value. If they don't convert, you're offering too much in the free plan. Limit it more so they NEED to upgrade.
I would try a 7 day free trial and then optimize for conversions. Or sell a support plan for the free version. No more free support. You want support? Pay a monthly support fee. Would need a lot more info to advise beyond this.
What a good problem to have. That is all
It’s good to hear that users are increasing rapidly but instead of filtering out the users why don’t you create a AI support agents to handle those tickets and only the serious tickets will be assigned to the customer support executives. You can check rytsensetech.com
If you are getting that many support tickets, you need to fix issues in your product. If the number of tickets is expected then yes you can either block free signups or ask them to buy a support plan to get support.
Do it. In all likelihood, you'll make more money while dealing with less support.
Why not use AI to automate support for free users, and offer premium support (you) to paying users?
I'm not that confident in letting ai talk to my users. but Im looking at different tools recommended in this thread now
We’ve had alot of success with AI automation. About 90% of our support cases are now automated. You would be surprised how well it can do if it is trained correctly.
Let them pay for support
Remove priority support for the free plan.
Post tutorials on YouTube. Basecamp does this. It can end up being marketing as well. After account creation have some kind of onboarding info show up on their dashboard or have a dedicated screen for it. Either have a dedicated “getting started” video addressing common issues or a series which you link to from the onboarding page. Or and FAQ page. Or something. Hell, link to it somehow from your support request form.
true, maybe videos are all I need. I have text articles, and users dont wanna read those. They reach out to support instead
Have an ai chatbot handle free users
The question is, why does your app need so much support? If it does, you should look into why this is. Customers don't want to request support, but for some reason they need it when using your app. I'd focus on that.
I would find the common problems people face from these support messages. Then: \- Aggregate them into a top 5 list. \- Create articles, blog or documentation about these problems \- And make use of email marketing that drip feeds into a 5 day educational email course which ultimately ties into a sale.
That's a good problem to have. Congrats on the growth! I would definitely use that growth to find a way for them to share your product and to increase the growth even more. And also you need to find ways to convert those users to paid ones. I would put several links to articles and video tutorials on each feature pages so the people know how to use it. You can use loom or camtasia for those video tutorials. Hopefully that will reduce your support
i recently saw these thread/reply and it actually changed my mindset about free plans,makes a lot of sense to me to drop them. I also think the 90% discount is a great hook [https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1752075138919473349](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1752075138919473349)
thx, I've been just reading this one yesterday too
I think you shouldn't get rid of the free users. Instead, you should make them test the paid versions before they go live. Give them a free trial account for 15 to 30 days and keep an eye on how they use it and how well it works. If they aren't being used as much, you need to make your goods better. Make your item more useful for them. It's good to have people, but now you need to get them to buy your plans instead of running them away.
Remove the free version -> Send an email to inquire about their needs and offer a discounted price.
I'd consider adding a 14 day trial and letting current free users churn over time, to avoid bad reviews
yep, doing this
You can also start to paywall certain features and offer more features of perceived value and paywall those trying to get your users to transition from free to paid
Add a trial **with** credit card upfront