Shipper · B2C · AI app builder
Skip the free plan and spend that money on paying users
~690 paying users, zero free users
Workedpricing
What they did
Offers no free tier because the AI product is expensive to run in time and money; invests the money instead into the product for paying users. Cheapest plan is $25/month.
What happened
~690 paid users, no free users, $25.6K MRR
“We don't offer free plans. As much as we'd love to, we've decided it's better to invest the money we're making in building a better product for our paying users.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Shipper: Launch a rough first version on Product Hunt in week oneFirst $50 MRR
- Shipper: Post on Reddit regularly to get the first paying usersPosts regularly hit ~400 upvotes; MRR grew from $50 to $1K
- Shipper: Write pages for 'alternatives to [rival]' and 'how much does [rival] cost'Named as an early user source; no numbers
- Shipper: Build in public on X every day, showing apps made with your own toolTook ~50 days to kick in, then ~$20K MRR added in 1-2 weeks
- Shipper: Put your product link in the second tweet, not the firstSaid to bring extra attention and site traffic; no numbers
- Shipper: Sell monthly credit plans from $25, plus one-off credit top-upsTop-ups are ~10% of revenue; gross volume ~$71K vs $25.6K MRR
- Shipper: Read rivals' Trustpilot reviews, roadmaps and Discords to find what users missLed to mobile apps, Chrome extensions and bots rivals lacked; no separate numbers
- Shipper: Remove every technical term and pitch 'your idea becomes a business'Founder says it set them apart from Lovable and Base44; no numbers
- Shipper: Build a small version of a booming product and aim for 1% of it$25.6K MRR (~$307K ARR) bootstrapped, with no paid ads