GTM Sauce

Calm · B2C · meditation app

Show only a yearly plan on the paywall

Monthly plan was back within 2-3 weeks; observed from outside

Failedpricingpaywall

What they did

Calm's paywall showed only the yearly plan for a period, then re-added the monthly plan two to three weeks later.

What happened

Reverted within weeks; Steve infers it did not work ('because it works').

In their words

Live App Teardowns: App Growth Optimization

Play from 1:14:28
1:14:23

HWe got Jake from Cal AI.

Steve P. Young… the breakthrough as well. All right, you're a real one, cuz if I see that message email coming up, I know you ain't a real one. "Steve, before doing a hard or soft paywall, is it better to allow the structure the bigger apps in the small niche use or should I go for a hard paywall always?" Yeah, look, I don't trust the bigger apps. They are big for a reason, right? And even then, like I had a this heated It wasn't a heated debate, but I had a debate with somebody and said, "Look, Calm does this." They were only showing one one plan yearly and I'm like, "Bro, most data most my data tells me two plans convert better than one, three plans convert better than two. That's most apps. Guess what? At the time, Calm did just have the yearly. Guess what, a month, two or three weeks later, they have their monthly back, because it works. We had one client that was doing $10 a year, just $10 a year. They had $1.99 per month, $10 year, and they're like, "Hey, 90% of everybody buys the year." So they removed the monthly from their paywall. Guess what happened to the sales, H? It went down. It went [crying sound effect] So because the $10 looked so much more attractive when you put $1.99 for the month, you're like, "Oh, that's like so cheap, $10." But if you don't take have the $1.99 anchor, people think it's kinda expensive. So that's why I like to Now every test every app is different, but don't always trust what you see with the bigger apps, cuz they're big for a reason. That means they can make a lot of mistakes where we …

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Tags: plan-count, annual-plan, monthly-plan