Burner · B2C · second phone number app
Let people choose on the paywall whether to take a free trial
Very positive A/B test result; no numbers given
Workedpaywallexperimentation
What they did
Picked up from app-growth community talk about radio buttons on trial paywalls. Instead of defaulting everyone into a free trial, the paywall lets users choose: those who want to lock in their number can buy immediately, the unsure can take the trial. Run as an A/B test; trial treatments are 3-day and 7-day.
What happened
A very positive test for Burner.
- Stage
- growth
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Pivots, Funding, and Building Apps That Last – Greg Cohn, Burner“We recently tested making the free trial optional instead of default, and that was a very positive test for us, interestingly.”
“They really want to custom, "No, no, no, I don't need a trial. I want to buy it." And then other people, "I'm not sure. I'm not sure I want to pay for this, et cetera, who give them the free trial." And so, let them self select.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
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- Burner: Demo the unreleased app to people at SXSW and collect a waitlistNew York Times interview and a panel slot; $50K revenue on launch day
- Burner: Charge $1.99 upfront and price credit packs to cover phone costsAbout $50K revenue on launch day
- Burner: Drop the $1.99 download price once there is money to cover free users
- Burner: Try a freemium version of an app where every free user costs moneyDidn't scale without lots of capital; stayed a premium, paid-first app
- Ad Hoc Labs: Skip the next VC round and run the app at breakeven insteadBreakeven or profitable for 6-8 years, grew past $10M a year
- Burner: Add a monthly and annual plan with unlimited texts, calls and photosBiggest single jump in revenue in company history; subscriptions now 90%+ of revenue
- Burner: Phase out one-off credits so everyone goes through a subscriptionFairly high churn from short-term users; founder now thinks credits might have fit them better
- Burner: Capture people already searching for a second phone number instead of running brand adsSeveral million downloads a year of high-intent users; press-driven users didn't convert
- Burner: Add caller lookup for unknown numbers to the premium planVery popular and a driver of premium upsells; founder didn't expect it to win
- Burner: Offer 8 plans so short-term and long-term users pick what fits
- Burner: When someone deletes their number, offer them a new oneRetains some users into a second number; 20-30% of new subs are returning users
- Burner: Add a white-label VPN inside the main app's premium planDrove a lot of premium-tier growth, but cost more to build than it should have
- Firewall: Launch separate robocall-blocking and business-number appsNeither got real traction; one was killed by an Apple feature
- Burner: Use paywall tools so the product team can launch tests without engineersFrom 1-2 paywall tests a month to several times that; about 1 in 4-5 wins
- Burner: Judge paywall tests by projected customer lifetime value from day-8 and day-30 data
- Ad Hoc Labs: Buy small apps that fit your users' needs and sell them inside your main app