Six free plans and where each one draws the line

Unlimited core, paid workflow

Tally offers unlimited forms and submissions under fair use, with paid plans at $24 and $74 per month. Fider offers unlimited feedback and members, with a $25 monthly Pro plan for moderation and SEO indexing. Both give away the main job and charge for what larger or more professional users need. Editorial inference: this works when the free product spreads itself—public forms and boards are seen by respondents—and when free users cost little to serve.

Sources: [1] [3] [4]

Monthly usage allowance

PostHog states that 97% of companies use it for free and that the free allowance, including one million product-analytics events, renews monthly. The limit is volume. A user pays when usage grows beyond the allowance or when they need advanced features. Editorial inference: a usage allowance converts customers who are growing, but needs infrastructure costs low enough to carry a very large free base.

Sources: [2]

Count limits: sites and channels

Carrd's free plan includes up to three sites with core features and adds a footer badge; Pro starts at $19 per year. Buffer's free plan connects up to three channels, and paid plans charge per channel. A count limit is easy to understand and grows with the customer's own activity. Editorial inference: the third site or fourth channel is a natural moment to ask for payment.

Sources: [5] [6]

Free forever with a premium upgrade

Senja calls its free-forever tier the most generous of any social-proof tool and offers paid plans from $29 per month. The pages reviewed do not show what share of free users upgrade for any of these six companies. Editorial analysis: compare free plans by the limit that triggers payment and by the cost of each free user, not by generosity alone. A generous plan without a clear trigger can grow usage while revenue stays flat.

Sources: [7]

Two more lines: audience size and the second person

Buttondown charges nothing for a newsletter's first 100 subscribers and raises the price as the list grows. Cal.com's individual plan is free with no usage limits, and paid plans start when a team needs collaboration, at $12 per user per month for Teams. These show two further triggers: an audience threshold and the arrival of a second user. Editorial inference: a collaboration trigger tends to arrive with a budget, because a team is now relying on the tool; an audience trigger arrives as the customer's own reach grows. Choose the trigger that coincides with the moment your customer is most likely to have money and a reason to spend it.

Sources: [8] [9]

How to read a free plan from the outside

When studying a competitor's free plan, record five things: the unit that is limited, the threshold, whether a card is required, whether free output carries branding, and how much history is kept. Simple Analytics, for example, offers a free hobby plan with one month of history and a required badge. Fathom offers no free plan but a 7-day trial that needs a card. Editorial inference: these small terms reveal how a company expects users to convert, and comparing them across competitors shows where a new product could offer a clearer or fairer trigger. Keep the record dated, because free plans change often, and revisit it each quarter to see which competitors tightened or loosened their limits and what that suggests about their costs.

Sources: [10] [11]

Experiments you can run

Small, falsifiable tests inspired by this case. They are MRRTrace suggestions, not steps the company reported.

Timeline

1. Oct 18, 2026

   All six pricing pages checked; free-plan limits recorded as listed.

   Source ↗