Hey Reader,

​
My Mac app made $7,900+ over 8 years as a paid app. It made $0 in the three months I gave it away for free.

Learn why I made it free, what happened, and what I'm charging next.

​Read the entire article here.​

I overhauled the UI this year, localized the App Store Page to 46 languages, and then Apple began featuring it on the front page.

The Free App Strategy

I went from around 70 ratings to 219 ratings. My goal was to get more app reviews.​
App ratings and reviews help new customers discover your app, and they provide the social proof that it actually works. Dropping the price to free removes the risk of trying it, so more people install and rate your app.
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It's been free since April 11th, and has 4,264 new downloads across 7 updates in 2026. Now I'm making it paid again.

The Paid App Strategy

Based on the data from RevenueCat, subscriptions are better because they allow users to download your app and try it.

RevenueCat shows that a hard paywall converts better than a soft paywall. Hard paywalls create 5x more revenue, so that's the easiest and best place to start.

All of my free and paid users will be grandfathered into the Pro tier, but all new users will have to pay to use the app.

​Download Super Easy Timer today, and lock in the free price before I enable subscriptions.

Thinking about Paywalls

I spend a lot of time planning how I want to monetize the app, and I see two primary tests to run right now. There will be more pricing tests once I have real subscription data.

Hard Paywall

In this experience, the user goes through the onboarding, uses the app with the "Try this" checklist, and then, upon successful completion, is presented with the Hard Paywall.

In this experience, the user is unable to start a timer, but can stage them. So the only thing that is blocked is the ability to start timers. Any timer start triggers the paywall to present.

Users can still feel how the app works, can customize colors and behaviors, but they cannot run timers. They can prove the timer works on top of any app, on top of full-screen apps, and even PowerPoint or Keynote presentations.

Soft Paywall

The next experiment I would try is a soft paywall that provides 1 free timer per day. This loosens the hard paywall prompt to the 2nd time a timer is started.

It will probably create less revenue, but may generate more goodwill with people who need a one-off timer. These customers might never want to pay for the app, so it could still bring back a loyal audience who only need to time something once in a while.

That repeat usage might eventually win some customers over, but I'm not sure.

I'd use Keychain to store whether a timer was invoked so that users can't easily get around the usage restriction.

This requires more logic and testing, and a good 2nd test.

Free Trials

I don't plan to start with free trials because I'll essentially be giving a free trial at the start. Users will be able to use the timer until they complete the "Try this" feature onboarding.

For a free trial, I plan to try 3 days first, and then 7 days second.

Free trials will only be enabled for Annual plans.

Test Durations

I plan to test for 2-4 weeks, pending download volume.

Pricing

I plan to use this pricing structure:

• $9.99 / week
• $49.99 / year

I may adjust the weekly price, but plan to keep it above $7.99 / week. For annual pricing, I expect to land between $39.99–$79.99 per year.

Weekly shows you what customers will pay for sooner than monthly. You can experiment faster, which is more important for conversions.

Why?

​Adam Lyttle explains that users tend to want to try an app without a long-term commitment. Maybe they have an event, and they want to use the timer app this weekend.

An annual subscription is a big commitment and a higher price. So a user might be willing to test the app before committing to the full term.

On a call with Adam last week, he mentioned that some users stay on weekly, and thus generate more revenue ($100/year instead of just $29-$49).
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Create value and charge for it.

Take Aways

1. Start free and request app reviews
2. Start with a hard paywall; experiment with a soft paywall second
3. Grandfather free users into your Pro tier (goodwill)
4. Skip monthly at launch, prefer weekly
5. Consider one free use per day as a soft paywall (keep it simple)
6. Charge more than you would pay ($9.99/week + $49.99/year)

Dive Deeper

Follow Jake Castillo from Cal AI. He wrote an excellent article, The Ultimate Paywall & Onboarding Playbook, that helped shape my thinking.

Quick Question

Have you run a pricing experiment on your app? What worked or what didn't work? Reply back; I read every email.

Talk soon,
Paul Solt
Paul@Super EasyApps.com

P.S. Are you building an iOS/macOS app?

I do 1:1 App Strategy Sessions.

Let's plan your pricing strategy so you aren't leaving money on the table. ​​​Book a time and let's improve your app.​​​