Life360 · B2C · family location sharing app
Write down which free features can never be taken away
Too new to judge; founder says ask again in a year
Unknownteam-processpaywallretention
What they did
Internal 'free user Bill of Rights' treated as a constitution only changeable at exec level. Rights include: core map, location history and place alerts must be free (the paywall can move a bit); no deceptive tactics or dark patterns; be transparent and notify users before changes; ads must not get in the way of the job to be done. Motivation: each small cut looks harmless in a holdout test, but 20+ cuts over years erode love and word of mouth in ways data can't show.
What happened
Recent; guest says 'ask me in a year if it worked'.
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Freemium Done Right: Lessons From a Multi-Billion-Dollar App — Chris Hulls, Life360“One is just to start the most important, like we've basically that location history, the core map, location history, and place alerts, they must be free.”
“No deceptive tactics around kind of dark patterns is another one.”
“We will not get in the way of the job to be done with an ad.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from Life360
All 23 Life360 tactics- Keep 2 days of free location history even though cutting it doubled subscribersCutting to 6-12 hours doubled subs from that hook; not shipped to protect free users
- Show the top-price plan on the paywall only to people a model predicts will buy itDoubled new Platinum subscribers without losing a single Gold subscriber
- Announce a pet feature with a cute animated dog that asks to be pettedCalled a huge success; many users made pet profiles; no numbers
- Sell trackers at low margins to pull people into the app and keep them longerTile owners retain better than non-owners; Pet GPS requires a subscription
- Add in-app share buttons and gifted subscriptions to copy parents' word of mouthFailed across the board; parents don't share inside apps
- Offer a free Tile tracker to people who subscribeHelps conversion for certain users; no numbers
More from this episode
- Life360: Give daily location sharing away free and charge for safety featuresGrew to 80M+ active users and ~$400M revenue; about 1 in 8 families pay
- Life360: Don't charge anything until you reach 10 million active usersFounder says charging early would have killed them; no direct numbers
- Life360: Test new ideas with a fake button shown to about 100 people
- Life360: Show banner ads to free users and check harm with a holdout groupHoldout showed no harm; banners drive little performance and CEO wants them gone
- Life360: Offer a one-tap Uber ride when a user lands at an airportFounder says it adds value to users; no numbers
- Life360: Sell only grouped location data, not raw GPS feeds, to a data partnerAbout $20M+ a year from Placer.ai; still some bad press
- Life360: Match good drivers with cheaper car insurance using their driving dataPlanned; could double revenue at 1/8 of paid-user performance
- Life360: Block ads for young users and let staff report bad ads in SlackGuest says it's been okay; a few bad ads still slip in
- Life360: Chase every possible battery or location bug, even if most are false alarms80-90% of chases are false alarms; old battery bugs still hurt trust