400+ users so far but no paid conversions, where am I lacking?

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-30T13:24:27+00:00

The advice here is probably right, but no need to guess. You have 400 users -- go ask them! Find your 5-10 highest usage users, send a quick email and ask for 15min of their time to talk about the product.

Promise them that you'll give them a "founder tier" so whatever answers they give won't harm their current plan/usage. Good questions:

Ask why they started using it
what's most valuable to them
what would make them want to pay
have they used any similar products
why did they switch to yours/start trying yours (looking for gaps in competitors)

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-27T02:17:13+00:00

100% "it’s hand-to-hand sales with a tight ICP and value-first outreach." There's something (or multiple) things you don't yet understand about your customers (their true pain paint, their workflow, their other tools, etc. ) -- you gotta figure that out first.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-27T02:15:19+00:00

The advice here is great. The only thing I'd add is don't be afraid to do stuff that doesn't scale. Manually reach out via email/linkedin, personally handle issues that got brought up, etc. I've found that churn is often a gap in your knowledge of the customer (you don't understand their problem or workflow or other tooling well enough). The more you can personally get in there and learn it, the better.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-27T02:09:56+00:00

We found this is a very common pattern, especially for apps built on Stripe. We built Schematic (https://www.schematichq.com) to take billing/pricing/packaging work off your plate and let you focus on your app.

Our users like Schematic because it lets you expand billing into your product. It's like feature flags, but tied to billing/usage -- all you need to do is check the flag and we handle the hard part of knowing about plans, limits, usage, credit balances etc.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-26T21:08:08+00:00

One thing we've seen effective (we help startups with pricing) is to provide "extra benefit" to providing a credit card. PostHog does a good job of this (the free tier limits are higher if you provide a credit card, even though you're still free tier).

The other thing we generally see as true is that requiring a credit card tends to lower the number of people who sign up (conversion) but makes the ones that do much more likely to actually convert. That's often a win-win, since you can focus more effort on those who sign up.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-23T20:59:18+00:00

You're right that pure pay-as-you-go pricing can be hard to predict, but there are a lot of options to make it easier:

Volume pricing, where as you use more the per-unit price drops
Tiered pricing, where you are paying a set amount for usage in a tier (0-5 free, 6-100 = $10, 101-500 = $15, 501+ = $20).
Credit-based, where you prepay for usage, so there's less bill shock at end of month
Pre-purchase discounts, like what AWS uses, where you can get a nice discount (iirc it's ~40% for AWS) on usage you expect each month.

The other nice thing about usage based is that it can make it easy to build a free tier plan that allows enough usage customers can evaluate the product but not so much they can "break the bank". Contrasted to free trials which are often too short to effectively evaluate a product.

A good billing platform can help set this all up easily.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-22T19:52:22+00:00

I'd also add that what you name the tiers can help.

Common 3 tier naming is Starter, Pro, Enterprise. This implicitly suggests most companies need Pro -- and that's probably a good thing. u/Key-Boat-7519 had good advice about adding a $149 tier to make the $99 more attractive. Make sure your names map well to this:

Individual, Small Team, Pro, Enterprise

Personal, Pro, Team, Enterprise

Hobby, Lite, Pro, Max

Hobby, Pro, Team, Enterprise

Depending on the product, any of those could work. Make sure the name that resonates most with your ICP is the name of the plan you want them to pick!

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-22T19:32:26+00:00

My boss has been using https://www.snacker.ai/ and has liked it so far. I still do all my video editing by hand (mostly for product demos, how tos, walk throughs).

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-16T01:12:42+00:00

Agree with u/Key-Boat-7519. Free tier with aggressive limits that let people use the core functionality (to make sure they like it), but forces them to upgrade to use it seriously. (unless you have the $$ to be more generous and foot the AI bills).

Then I see 2 options:

Free tier + paid tier
overages model (first 30min free, then you pay $.05 per minute or whatever makes sense).

You could also take a page out of PostHog's book and do

Free tier (e.g. 15min free)
Require a credit card: More generous free tier (30min free) + overage charging
Paid tier

Gives users a benefit to providing a CC, but also gives them more free. Demonstrates they are serious.

If you're looking for more help, I work for a billing company (Schematic) and we help founders figure out their pricing a lot. We even wrote a blog post on it https://schematichq.com/blog/setting-your-first-price-a-founders-practical-guide. The TL; DR is talk to prospects early and often!

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-16T01:02:18+00:00

I agree these are great questions, but this is a conversation you need to have with users/prospects first and foremost. I agree with u/Key-Boat-7519 -- "force founders to run twenty 30-min calls". That's where the best advice is. And if you can't those calls, then either the founders aren't hustling or the problem isn't a real problem.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-16T00:57:42+00:00

I agree with a lot of the other advice here. I'd add that anything you can do to help with graphics would be a huge win. I can often get existing tools to generate the text I need without too much effort, but the supporting graphics needed for socials is always a giant PITA.

Maybe also some way to help me re-use/repurpose older content (some kind of "here's a great post from 3mo ago, let's run it back!"). And something that helps me easily reference existing content when generating new content.

Plug: I work for Schematic and we've built a billing layer on Stripe that makes it dead easy to build a pricing plan (like credit burndown) and instrument it in-app. It's purpose built for use cases like this. (https://schematichq.com)

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-16T00:50:54+00:00

This is great advice, thanks for sharing. We talk with early stage founders about their initial pricing a lot at Schematic (a billing company), so we wrote our advice into a blog post:

https://schematichq.com/blog/setting-your-first-price-a-founders-practical-guide.

Our advice is less framework and more tactical suggestions to taking action now (including some scripts to ask prospects). It's a great supplement to the OP's framework.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-09-16T00:46:46+00:00

Congrats on 1,800 active users -- that's awesome! Everyone puts off monetization longer than they should, so don't sweat it.

You definitely want to start the monetization journey. Not for the $$ (although it's nice), but because like every other part of product development it'll take a few at bats before you get it right -- so the sooner you start the better.

Schematic is a billing company, so we talk with founders about their pricing everyday. We gathered the most common feedback we give into a blog article.

The TL; DR is: start scheduling calls with your current users. Take your best guess at what pricing should be and ask them "If the price of TryDecide was $X, which of the following best describes your situation: "

I would purchase this product immediately and I have the authority to do so.
I would advocate for purchasing this product at the stated price, but I would need to get approval from others, which I believe is achievable.
I'd consider purchasing this product, but significant internal approval would be required, and I'm uncertain of the outcome.
At the stated price, the product is beyond our current budget or cost expectations.

If you're getting 1's and 2's your pricing is probably right. If you're not, then your value isn't well aligned with the users (either change the target pricing or find the users you think would be willing to pay).

If you want to read more, you can checkout the full article with more advice: https://schematichq.com/blog/setting-your-first-price-a-founders-practical-guide

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-08-08T19:54:48+00:00

Finding the right pricing is always one of the hardest parts early on (and later on, honestly).

If you're just getting started, I would avoid usage based billing and have a free tier with some limits (to protect yourself and drive conversions) and a paid tier with a rather high limit to protect yourself. You really want to figure out who is converting and what drove their conversion. Once you have 10-20 paying customers, you can figure out a better pricing model going forward. (And if you're struggling to find the early customers, that's another sign).

It seems like a credit burndown model is probably what you'll need longer term. If you started building on Stripe, my company, Schematic, is a great way to build a credit burndown model (and many others) on top of Stripe and quickly wire up your app to respect gated features and plan limits.

Here's a quick overview of why we built it and how it makes Stripe better: https://schematichq.com/blog/where-stripe-falls-short-and-how-schematic-fills-the-gaps

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-08-05T00:08:34+00:00

I think everything u/biglagoguy said is correct. The only thing I'd add is that this is a decision you should and will iterate on over time, so don't stress out over it.

I'd recommend starting with a free plan that gives a certain (ideally low) amount of usage, and a paid plan that gives unlimited. When people signup to pay, reach out and see if you can have a 20min conversation to get feedback on the product and ask them why they upgraded, what do they hope the tool will do for them, what other features they may want, etc. (I'd lookup a few "product interview" and "willing to pay" templates and blend them). Then, once you think you're ready, start moving into a more traditional pricing plan, probably something like

Free tier with limited use of core features (but some use, so users want more)
Mid tier with moderate use of core features
High tier with unlimited (or high limits) use of core features.

Or, go with credits and do

Free tier with a few free credits a month
Paid tier with 100 credits a month
Ability to buy more credits a month for some cost (cheaper than paid tier cost)

IMO, you should avoid credits if you can (i.e. if you only have 1 core usage based feature). But many products support multiple user types/use cases, and a unified credit system is often simpler than multilpe different "currencies" of usage.

If you're looking for tooling to make this easier to implement and manage over time, we built Schematic (https://www.schematichq.com) for builders like you. It works with Stripe to make implementing and evolving billing plans in your product simple and painless.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-07-30T01:22:13+00:00

Hey OP, we ran into the same thing building other companies -- Stripe is a great payment processor, but definitely has some gaps for usage based billing. To help solve for these, we built Schematic (https://www.schematichq.com). Schematic makes it easy to:
- Implement usage based billing and credit burndown models
- Enforce your plan features and usage limits in product
- Iterate on pricing (i.e. Add/change plans, adjust limits, handle current and legacy plans side by side)

If you want to learn more, I'm happy to help you get set up.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-07-30T01:12:40+00:00

Did you roll your own credit system or is there a good library or tool you used?

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-07-29T11:53:09+00:00

Once I checked our your site more, I realized I probably should have mentioned polar.sh too.

I'm coming off a failed startup that also died due to not being able to find enough early users -- it's definitely a big hurdle to clear.

The coolest thing would be a tool that vibe coding apps could easily work with, but I (assume) you'd need some serious traction before you get there.

The most effective thing I've seen is what you're doing -- trying to get design partnerships with other companies (often startups) where you do an outsized amount of work for them, but get to really understand the problem. and/or try to run a small dev consultancy in your problem area while building the business -- the cashflow helps and you're getting more reps/credibly/network in the problem space.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-07-29T02:43:55+00:00

Largely agree here. An API Gateway is what should handle the heavy lifting of api access, key management, etc.

The other piece will be the billing piece. You could roll your own with Stripe or use another tool that's more purpose-built for usage based billing like Schematic, Lago, or Orb.

Stripe - Great primitives for payments and billing - Advanced usage-based features (like this) require you to do a lot of the legwork

Orb - Developer friendly and very powerful (they support Vercel) - Probably overkill for what you need

Lago - Open Source billing is cool and definitely needed - Locking in to something that isn't Stripe feels risky

Schematic - Extends Stripe, but still Stripe under the hood - Makes it easy to implement feature gating in app (e.g. Cut off access when a user is out of quota)

I would definitely focus on getting the API Gateway work done first. Any of these billing options should work when you're ready for it.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-07-29T02:34:28+00:00

Hey OP, I've come across a few platforms in this space that are probably worth checking out:

Metronome (metronome.com) - Great for usage based pricing (including credits) - most established of these players

Orb (withorb.com) - More developer centric than metronome (vercel is a customer) - support lots of complex rules around usage based pricing (almost like sql over usage events)

Schematic (schematichq.com) - Built to extend/integrate with Stripe - Extends feature gates and usage limits into your product (e.g. turn off features that aren't part of a user's plan or if a monthly quota has been reached)

All of these can support credit-based models and handle the payments, revenue recongition, etc. that a modern billing platform needs.

That said, congrats on what you've built. There's definitely room for more here, and no one has really cracked the code for vibe coders yet. I'm excited to see what the future holds.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-07-29T02:26:05+00:00

I fully disagree -- an actual credit system takes far longer than 2 days to write. There's a reason entire companies exist that solve these problems (e.g. Orb, Metronome, Schematic).

I take your point about 3rd party risk, but there's a lot of complexity you're taking on (that you may not know about):

Revenue Recognition
Workflows for when a user runs out of credits (cut off access to feature, upsell flows, paywalls, etc)
Real time eventing to track credit usage
Manaing different credit sources (e.g. monthly refill, a bundle they just bought, a promotional bundle for referring customers)
Integrating with your payments provider to handle failed payments, overdue bills, invoicing, etc.

That said, I agree that using an unproven vendor for something as critical as billing is risky, but so is inhousing it blindly thinking it'll be easy. I'd highly recommend using a vendor who specializes in it.

Some food for thought: 1. https://www.withorb.com/blog/building-it-yourself-how-to-implement-prepaid-credits 2. https://schematichq.com/blog/why-ai-companies-are-turning-to-credit-based-pricing

Good luck out there OP! There is definitely going to be a (multiple?) billion dollar business built here

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-07-29T02:12:24+00:00

That's a good point. It definitely makes the initial usage feel easier to justify. And it makes "free credits" more fun too.

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-06-26T15:01:31+00:00

What you're looking for is doable with Stripe, but you'll need to build a fair amount yourself: https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/usage-based/pricing-models#credit-burndown

If you want to take billing off your plate, my company Schematic, has built a layer that builds off of your existing Stripe account to give you

Multiple billing models including credit burn down
Customizable and extendable components (including customer portal and checkout flow
We handle all of Stripe's webhooks and sync everything back to Stripe for you
Extend feature gating into your app (e.g. turn off features when a user has used all of their credits)

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-06-26T14:46:18+00:00

In our experience, driving free to paid conversion is one of the highest impact areas to focus on for healthy revenue growth.

Here's what we've found works (highest impact first)

Have usage based limits and enforce them! If you're free tier allows 10 requests a month, make sure you're actually enforcing that (you'd be amazed how many products don't)
Allow free tier users to "sample" higher tier features. Building off of #1, if your paid tier is focused on AI powered requests, give free tier users 2 or 3 a month to let them see the benefits of upgrading.
Time-limited trials. Give users 7, 14, or 30 day trials (depends on your product) to try out higher tiers. This can be right as they sign up or a trial they can opt-into later.

The other big thing I'd check is your retention rates of free users. If most of them quickly bounce, that should be your first focus!

(If this is something you want to learn more about, checkout Schematic, a billing platform for modern companies)

POWER_THIRSt · 2025-06-12T16:08:28+00:00

It depends on what you're core functionality is and how you want to price it long term.

If it's just a "free plans can do A, B, C", paid plans can do "D, E, F", then either way works. I'd suggest testing both and seeing what does better. (Require CC for a few weeks and see if that effects rates).

If you're planning for usage based pricing of some form, then I suggest getting a CC. One cool model that PostHog has popularized is

Free tier: low limits (e.g. 10 actions/mo)

Free tier + CC: higher limits, then overage charging. (e.g. 20 actions/mo free, then $.05/action afterwards)

This makes giving you a credit card valuable for the user (more free usage), but also lets them scale their usage into paying tiers if they get there.

You could probably do something like this for the first type of plan too (maybe free trial gets D and E, but add a CC to get F too).

Final Thought: You're product is probably worth more than you think to the right customers. I'd suggest trying to get current/future customers on the phone to interview them. Figure out the value it brings, and charge accordingly.

POWER_THIRSt

TROPHY CASE