Tinder · B2C · dating app
Give each paid feature its own paywall and check its sales every morning
Showed 2-3 features drive most new subs; weak ones were made free
Workedpaywallanalytics-attributionfeature-development
What they did
Every subscription feature had its own paywall entry point. A dashboard reviewed every morning showed clicks per entry point, conversion rate and the mapped incremental subscription revenue. Features that did not convert were either given more prominent placement or made free. Never moved a free feature behind the paywall.
What happened
Found a power law: two to three power features drove most new subscriptions; features that didn't move conversion were made free.
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How a Single Paywall Experiment Generated $50M – Jeff Morris, Chapter One, Ex-Tinder“Pretty much every subscription feature had a paywall entry point that we had a dashboard we'd wake up to every day and we could see the number of, obviously the number of clicks it got and then look at the conversion rate and then map that to incremental revenue for the subscription product.”
“There were some cases where we thought we could charge for something and then we would look at the conversion data on that paywall and it just wasn't moving the needle and so we would make it free.”
“We had two to three power features that people really paid for, and then we would try and design more features on top of those over time or new experiments, but it was pretty consistent.”
Related topics
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More from Tinder
All 22 Tinder tactics- Use a prediction model to show each user just the one plan they'll likely buyEstimated multimillion-dollar yearly revenue gain in an A/B test
- Keep dating free for most users so there are plenty of people to match85-90% never pay; the 10-15% who do fund the business
- Sell a paid 'super like' that stands out from a normal likeSuper Likes are 3x more likely to get a match
- Raise the price of the standalone feature so it stops stealing subscriptionsFewer lost subscriptions, slightly lower conversion, higher total revenue
- Price the 7-day feature pass the same as a 7-day subscription, shown side by sideLess cannibalization and more revenue, but still not good enough
- Offer three subscription levels and sell extra boosts on topFormer CPO calls it one of the best ways to price consumer apps; no revenue split given
More from this episode
- Tinder: Put a toggle in the top bar that opens a new paid tierAbout $50M in revenue from one small A/B test
- Tinder: Limit free swipes per day and charge for moreStopped mass-swiping and auto-swipers; turned into a strong revenue driver (no numbers)
- Tinder: Offer several paid tiers, from cheap starter to big spenders at $50K a yearGuest's biggest revenue unlock at Tinder; no numbers given
- Tinder: Set different prices by country, starting with fast-growing markets like India
- Tinder: Polish the paywall like a core feature, e.g. add a gold shimmerGuest says it showed users they cared; no numbers
- Tinder: Ask for payment only after a user gets a match and starts chatting
- Tinder: Build engagement and retention first; push monetization only years laterReached 30-40M monthly users before revenue became a focus in years 4-5
- Tinder: Create a revenue team with its own iOS and Android engineersGrew from 6 engineers in 2016 to 40+
- Flighty: Give the first flight free with every pro feature, then lock some
- Make free users pay before they can fix their buggy first buildFrustrated users complained publicly on Twitter
- Supabase: Ship a new feature every single dayBecame the default database for most major website builders