Even after launch the struggle remains to balance between exposure and financial gain -- should you offer a free trial or a free tier? From the question I'd pr

Even after launch the struggle remains to balance between exposure and financial gain -- should you offer a free trial or a free tier? From the question I'd presume the product will be paid in the end and not supported by ads and external revenue stream. Given this I don't think one can test the market-product fit without actually charging money. There are exceptions, think big social launches that turn into businesses (like Ghost blogging). For me this always seems rather hard to pull off. Like expecting that at launch day there will be 10k signups. See this for one take: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ab-testing-free-trial-versus-freemium/ http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ab-test... To answer your question, it highly depends on the nature of your product, business model, competition and financial backing. So I do not have an answer, more like a ramble to help clean up your head. One thing to warn, at least in my experience it is very hard to turn free users into paying one (conversion-wise) (free tier case). Free tier user and paying user have very different characteristics. Yet a lot of successful SaaS companies do have free tier. At the same time there are successful known companies who have removed a free tier (and/or doubled-tripled pricing without any public post to notify new users). I'd guess existing users at least kept the pricing.