Run the Business

Run the Business

Deciding Free vs Paid in B2B Product Packaging

Ibrahim Bashir's avatar
Ibrahim Bashir
Apr 27, 2022
∙ Paid

Quick post today on a conversation I’ve been having with some folks in my PM network: how do you decide what stays free vs gets paywalled in your B2B product?

There are of course many in-between monetization paths beyond just a binary free vs paid offering…options like freemium, trials, and services can all be the right lever for your product / motion. But I love frameworks and was very curious if there was a way to determine a path at the feature ideation phase, and today I heard a simple but clear framework for things that absolutely should be in free*

  1. if it helps acquisition

  2. if it helps activation

  3. if it helps retention

* this is not to say that the full version of the feature has to be completely free - but you certainly want a usable, valuable version out there for the reasons above

Basically anything that starts or spins your flywheel…you want to get in front of as many users as possible. And if you have a feature that helps on multiple lifecycle levers, it’s likely a differentiator fo…

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