Freemium vs. Free Trial: Doing Neither Well

It's always interesting to see how two competitors approach their GTMs differently. For example, I was recently testing out Leadfeeder vs. Snitcher. Both product had a free trial period, which expired. But after the trial ended, the experience vastly differed.

Here's Leadfeeder – still sending data, but in a feature-limited free state:

Whereas Snitcher stopped sending data entirely:

The problem with Leadfeeder's approach is that it's only sending a subset of the traffic data, so it's not really a usable "free" version. And when I try to refresh to get a full (even if limited) data feed, I get this upgrade modal:

Guy Podjarny, Founder of Snyk, shared his thoughts on the Product-Led Growth Motion with a FounderCulture Founder, where he said: "In practice, startups conflate "Free Trial" with "Freemium" and they don't do either well. In Freemium, the target use case should be truly free, and the user should be able to be successful using it for free without limitations."

That's what's happening to me here. LeadFeeder isn't providing a truly usable "free" tier.

The problem with Snitcher's free trial approach is that I started the trial before I was really ready to evaluate the tool. This happens to me all the time; I'd prefer a free trial that's not just bounded by days, but by actual usage (maybe # of logins) with some maximum day range (maybe 3 or 6 months).

Lots of opportunities for PLG optimizations!