Life360 · B2C · family location and safety app
Keep 2 days of free location history even though cutting it doubled subscribers
Cutting to 6-12 hours doubled subs from that hook; not shipped to protect free users
Mixedpaywallpositioning-niche
What they did
Free users see the last 2 days of circle location history. A test cut free history to 6 or 12 hours, which doubled subscribers coming from the location-history hook. Leadership declined to ship it because it makes the feature much less useful and can make people less safe; a free, engaged user base drives network effects and word of mouth (parents telling parents). An early test by the guest that took value from free users showed a big revenue upside and was vetoed by the exec team ('freemium bill of rights'). Rule: only gate features that are expensive to provide (e.g. roadside assistance).
What happened
Test doubled subscribers from the hook, but the change was not shipped; company accepts short-term revenue loss for long-term growth.
- Stage
- scale
- Effort
- A/B tests on location history window; decision at exec level
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Freemium at Scale: Why Life360 Protects its Free Users – Giordano Contestabile“We have a feature that is a location history where you can look at for the last two days for free users where people in your circle were.”
“if you cut it down to six hours or even 12 hours, we doubled the amount of subscribers from the hook. So it will be a sizable win. A lot of company will take that, but we haven't because it does make the feature significantly less appealing for free users.”
“And so I ran back to the exec team and like, "We're going to be rich." And instead of telling me, "Oh, this is great, et cetera, et cetera." I basically got yelled at.”
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More from Life360
All 23 Life360 tactics- Sell only grouped location data, not raw GPS feeds, to a data partnerAbout $20M+ a year from Placer.ai; still some bad press
- Give daily location sharing away free and charge for safety featuresGrew to 80M+ active users and ~$400M revenue; about 1 in 8 families pay
- 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
- Don't charge anything until you reach 10 million active usersFounder says charging early would have killed them; no direct numbers
- 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
- 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
More from this episode
- Life360: 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
- Life360: Let every team, even finance and HR, run growth experiments with AI toolsWork in progress; no numbers given
- Life360: Track test speed, win rate and average win, and count inconclusive tests as failures
- Life360: On day 2, nudge people to an unused feature using a family member's nameNo numbers; first-week activation strongly predicts users still around a year later
- Life360: Announce a pet feature with a cute animated dog that asks to be pettedCalled a huge success; many users made pet profiles; no numbers
- Life360: Add pet and aging-parent features so families keep using the app after kids leave
- Life360: 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
- Life360: Offer a free Tile tracker to people who subscribeHelps conversion for certain users; no numbers
- Life360: Show one paywall screen during onboarding, even with a generous free planRemoving it would cut a significant share of new subscribers; no numbers
- Life360: Give every software feature a great free version; charge for costly services
- Life360: Ship a 'just landed' alert, then partner with Uber to offer a ride on landingUber approached them; a broader Uber partnership is about to launch
- Life360: Add in-app share buttons and gifted subscriptions to copy parents' word of mouthFailed across the board; parents don't share inside apps