Does having a free tier work?

As always it really depends on the problem you're trying to solve. The typical free tier model (as opposed to a free trial) works by allowing people to use a subset of functionality indefinitely until they decide to sign up for the "pro" plan.

From a business point of view, having a bunch of users on the free tier can help in a lot of ways:

• more people will sign up (because the barrier to entry is lower)
• more people will give feedback (which helps to build a better product)
• more people to spread word of mouth about the product
• if the product provides value they should stick around
• theoretically you can still monetise people on the free tier with ads or something (but doing that can have other downsides)

On the flip side, having a free tier also has quite a few challenges:

• people on the free tier still expect some level of support
• many of them will never convert (but they often still want you to build more free features)
• the software might need to scale to a much larger audience
• the sales funnel tends to be more complex (as opposed to a "buy now" button on the landing page)

At the end of the day, it works for some and not others. It's probably worth looking around at other products and seeing what they do. Ask yourself, why do they do it that way? But also remember, just because your competitor does something doesn't mean you should blindly copy. Sometimes doing it differently is exactly what gives you the competitive advantage.

This guide by Patrick Mckenzie does a great job of analyzing the pros and cons of free tiers (among other things) https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/business-of-saas