Value Study · B2C · value study app for painters
On Android, replace the hard paywall with a soft paywall trial
Android reviews recovered from very bad
Workedpaywall
What they did
Android launched in December 2025 with the iOS hard paywall and got very bad reviews; Android users hate hard paywalls, pay less and prefer lifetime purchases. Brought back a free tier as a soft-paywall trial. Kept Android because many artists use an Android phone with an iPad and value cross-platform access. Considering removing the soft paywall again now reviews are back up, or keeping a hard paywall on iOS only.
What happened
Reviews came back up after the switch (support replies and fast bug fixes happened at the same time)
- Stage
- monetization
This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.
“I realized that I was getting very very bad reviews to the point where I had to do something about it, and then I kind of brought back a kind of free tier, um, which was like a a soft paywall trial, essentially.”
“whereas on Android, they're less likely to pay money, they hate hard paywalls, and they're more likely to pay a lifetime purchase than a subscription,”
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All 23 Value Study tacticsMore from this episode
- Value Study: Name your app after the term people already learn in classSteady users for years with no marketing; trade-off is a hard-to-brand name
- Value Study: Rank for many small, specific keywords that only your real users search1,000+ keywords ranked; low volume but high conversion
- Value Study: Show what the app does in the first screenshot, not a menu
- Value Study: Win over teachers, who hand your app to a whole class at onceMain growth driver; teachers share with ~30 students at a time; founder says paid outreach to them struggled
- Value Study: Sell school licenses through a separate schools-only appDidn't work; no school took it
- Value Study: Turn the workarounds users show you into built-in featuresFounder says it worked; no numbers
- Value Study: Remove a feature people call confusing once a newer one covers itBackfired; many users who relied on it complained
- Value Study: Ask an optional 'Where did you hear about us?' with a free-text box31,000 answers; free text names specific teachers, courses and books
- Value Study: Ask which mediums users work in so the app feels made for them
- Value Study: Translate your app into several more languagesPaying users in the new languages; Dutch became common out of nowhere
- Value Study: Add a one-time Pro unlock to an app that has always been freeAbout £200 a month, steady; most users stayed free and missed key features
- Value Study: Announce 3 months ahead that the free tier ends; lifetime buyers keep accessClear spike in lifetime purchases before the switch; no review backlash mentioned
- Value Study: Drop the free tier and charge everyone a small amountSubscriptions and lifetime sales rose; revenue doubled in a year to $61K
- Value Study: Offer a lifetime plan next to the yearly plan50% lifetime, 50% yearly until the Android launch
- Value Study: Reply personally to every support email and fix bugs right awayMany reviews name the founder; turned angry users into five-star reviewers
- Value Study: Hire a cheap influencer with a big following in another language$4,000 in one week and a lasting lift; broken Android translations brought bad reviews
- Value Study: Run an ad in the main print magazine for your hobby nicheRoughly broke even; reached people who wouldn't have found it
- Value Study: Run Meta ads for a niche hobby appNo positive ROI yet; only dabbled
- Value Study: Add a tip jar to your settings menu$157 in tips this year, covering the developer fee
- Value Study: Test higher prices in the US firstSettled on a price about halfway up; no numbers
- Rank number one for your niche's main keywordsAbout $30K MRR; #1 for ~10 related terms
- Add Meta ads once organic growth in your niche levels offRevenue doubled or tripled; took time
- Raise your yearly price from $29.99 to $49.99Good so far, per a viewer; no numbers
- Show 2-3 screens of benefits and testimonials right before the paywallWon the client's test against the other onboarding version