Papermark · B2B · open-source DocSend alternative
Keep a free plan forever when the big competitor drops theirs
~100 signups a day and ~100 new paying customers a month
Workedpricingpositioning-niche
What they did
Papermark offers a free version; some signups move into free trials and others stay free forever, which the founder is fine with, aiming to make getting started as easy as possible. DocSend eventually killed its free version, and none of the top players in the market offer one, which Papermark treats as an opening.
What happened
About 100 signups per day and about 100 new paying customers last month
- Stage
- Ongoing
“And you know, a portion of those go into free trials. Um others they just stay on the free version forever, and that's totally fine.”
“DocSend eventually killed their free version, that's an opening for us, right? Nobody has a free version other than us in that market from the, you know, top players.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Papermark: Tweet the idea first; build it over a weekend only if people engageTweet got 450 likes and 95K+ views; the launch went viral and users asked to pay
- Papermark: Build an open-source alternative to a well-known tool people dislikeNow ~$3M ARR; founder credits timing and a known, disliked incumbent
- Papermark: Share your wins and losses publicly every monthFirst ~1,000 GitHub stars in 1-2 months; 8,900 stars now
- Papermark: Post where your customers are, even if your following is elsewhereOne LinkedIn post reached ~250K views; helps but can't be tracked to revenue
- Papermark: Match the incumbent's must-have features before you expect people to switchUnder $1M for ~2 years; then $1M to $2M in four months once parity hit
- Papermark: Let customers put their own domain and brand on everything they shareFounder calls it a differentiator; no numbers
- Papermark: Make shared links use your domain unless users add their ownFounder says most growth is organic and word of mouth; 60K+ teams
- Papermark: Save a year of personal runway first, then bootstrap with a co-founderBootstrapped and profitable at ~$3M ARR; never considered quitting