RevenueCat · B2B · in-app subscription software
Build the product so free users cost almost nothing to support
Lets the company keep a generous free tier; 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
David BarnardWell, no, what a lot of apps do for weather is they do actually just use the National Weather Service data, which is generally pretty good, and it's free. And there are ways that we can control our costs so that we could offer a freemium experience to users. So it's inspiring to me to go this deep because I think a lot of people should be thinking along these lines.
Jacob EitingRevenueCat's had a free experience and we designed it to be supportable from the beginning. All of our cost scaling is such that if somebody's not paying, if an end user's not paying, it doesn't really cost us much to support. And that takes design choices. There's ways we could have designed it that wouldn't have been that way, and that's allowed us to maintain this really nice freemium tier.
Tanuj ChatterjeeNo, but you open up the funnel right there, 10X. And it has to provide meaningful value. Right?
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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
- Launch a Windows version and promote it to your mobile usersNamed biggest win of the year; people buy on the website directly, no numbers
Tags: freemium, free-tier-costs