Freemium is one of the most misunderstood business models in software. Most developers implement it as a conversion funnel: give users just enough to get hooked, then lock the most important things behind a paywall and wait for the frustration to drive upgrades. It works, in a narrow sense. It also produces apps people resent paying for.
BlockerPlus is freemium. We think about it very differently.
The core insight: free should be genuinely good
Our free tier includes the core blocking engine — the thing that actually blocks content across browsers and apps. Not a crippled version. Not a time-limited trial. The real thing, working properly, available to everyone who downloads the app.
This was a deliberate choice, and it cost us conversion in the short term. But our users are trying to change something difficult about their lives. Many of them are in financial difficulty, or are students, or are in parts of the world where our Premium pricing is genuinely significant. Making the core tool inaccessible to them would be a betrayal of why we built it.
"Premium should be the answer to 'I love this, I want more of it' — not the answer to 'this is frustrating, I have to pay to make it stop'."
What Premium actually is
The features we put behind Premium are those that require ongoing infrastructure or appeal to users who are serious about long-term behaviour change:
- Accountability partners — requires notification infrastructure and ongoing server costs
- Detailed usage reports and streaks — data storage and processing
- Scheduled blocking profiles — more complex configuration for users with specific routines
- Priority support — human time, which is genuinely scarce
- Multiple device sync — server-side state management
The conversion event that matters
For BlockerPlus, the conversion moment is almost never "I've hit a free tier limit." It's almost always "this app is working for me, and I want the accountability partner feature to make it even harder to slip." The user isn't upgrading because we've made the free experience painful. They're upgrading because the free experience earned their trust.
Pricing with integrity
We set our pricing by asking: what is fair for the value we provide, relative to what our users can reasonably spend? We don't use dark patterns in the upgrade flow — no countdown timers, no "limited time offer" banners, no manufactured urgency. The upgrade pitch is simple: here's what Premium includes, here's what it costs, here's how to subscribe.
For developers: If you're building a freemium app, ask yourself: would I recommend the free tier to a friend? If the answer is "no, they'd need Premium to really get value," your freemium model is a funnel, not a product. The distinction matters.