Super Unlimited · B2C · free VPN app
Launch a Windows version and promote it to your mobile users
Named biggest win of the year; people buy on the website directly, no numbers
What they did
What happened
In their words
How the World's #1 VPN App Reached 1 Billion Downloads – Tanuj Chatterjee, Super Unlimited
Tanuj ChatterjeeI know SEO in general has suffered. Every consumer company that's reliant on the web traffic is suffering a little bit. Both SEO is down a little bit because the first results that you see are Gemini and whatnot in Google, as well as even paid search marketing is less effective because the real estate is gone. Part of the real estate for the first page is gone because Gemini takes it over. So, a lot of people are struggling.
Tanuj ChatterjeeSo I don't think we will spend time on SEO, but we won't over index on SEO. I think one of our biggest channels for growth, even to send them to make them start using Windows, is through our big mobile user base. So we'll spend a lot of time on product marketing within mobile. SEO, we know it'll take time. We are still working on it. We have content people, we have SEO people, but that's not the top channel for us.
David BarnardIt's funny because I've read the case study about this and it's doing like 1,600 app downloads per month, which for at your scale, that's just such peanuts, but for a lot of apps, that would be a pretty meaningful improvement to download. So it's all about scale there.
Tanuj ChatterjeeIt's less about an experiment. It's more about us building and launching our Windows product. As I mentioned, it's a First World problem, but the downside of being number one is where's the new growth coming from? Where's the forward-looking growth coming from? And this is what we are betting on. This is one of the big things that we are betting on that'll drive us future growth.
Tanuj ChatterjeeWe are already starting to see a lot of takers. People are coming in onto our website and buying it directly, to our surprise. Our website didn't even even exist, so our brand is known. We have to start doing a lot more product marketing this year. So, building a product that we are happy about, that we are proud of is great.
Tanuj ChatterjeeIt took more time because we had a product. We were not very happy with some of the service quality issues. I'm sure there's still issues that we will find, but finally it was at a place where we are very happy about. We launched it, and we are very excited about us showcasing it to our users for future, for our forward-looking growth.
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More from this episode
- Read your reviews and rivals' reviews, then fix what people complain aboutCredited as the main driver to #1 for 'VPN'; no single number tied to it
- Let people use the app right away: no login, one tap to connectVisits last ~30 seconds; guest credits it for organic volume and ratings
- Ask for a rating only after the app has done its job2M+ high ratings on the App Store; no before/after given
- Test modern, prettier store screenshots against your plain old onesModern designs lost 80% of tests; winners gave no meaningful lift, so old ones stayed
- Hire an SEO agency that knows your field to publish programmatic pages~1,600 app downloads a month; poor conversion; some AI-search traffic, not top 5
- Give away an unlimited free version, paid for with an ad or twoLow paid conversion, but 1M+ mostly organic downloads a day and very profitable
- Don't show any ads the first time someone opens the app
- Keep the free service running in poor and censored countries, even at a loss15M downloads in 4 days during a Turkey Instagram ban; each spike leaves a higher baseline
- Charge for no ads, faster servers, more locations and use on every deviceCompany growing and very profitable; no conversion numbers
- Show an ad for your new eSIM app to all existing VPN usersDidn't work: no travel intent; now planning timed promos before summer
- Buy search ads in Apple and Google stores only where the return holds upSpend capped by ROAS; some cannibalization of organic installs accepted
- Have the head of support report to the head of productGuest says product hears about problems right away; no numbers
- Walk into elevators with a debug build to test dropped connections
- Compare your ratings country by country and dig into the low onesGuest says it helped a lot; no numbers
- Launch a new feature in 5 countries behind a switch, then expand
- Start on the cloud, then move heavy traffic to your own rented serversMakes a free tier affordable; cloud still absorbs surges
- Build the product so free users cost almost nothing to supportLets the company keep a generous free tier; no numbers
Tags: windows, new-platform, cross-promotion, direct-web-sales