I built a SaaS for photographers and watched everyone leave before signing up. Here's what I changed.
I launched Crevaxo a few weeks ago - a licensing-first CRM for photographers and videographers. Built the whole thing solo, spent months getting it right, and was genuinely proud of what shipped.
Then I opened PostHog.
Landing page traffic was healthy. Sign-ups were not. People were arriving, looking around, and leaving. Not a trickle - a wall. The kind of drop-off that makes you question everything you built.
I did what most founders do first. I rewrote the hero copy. Tweaked the pricing. Added more feature callouts. Nothing moved.
Then I stopped looking at the page and started thinking about the person landing on it.
Crevaxo is a brand new tool. No reviews. No word of mouth. No trust built up anywhere. And the very first thing I was asking someone to do was hand over their name, email, and a password - before they'd seen a single screen of the actual product.
I wouldn't do that. Why would they?
The problem wasn't the copy or the pricing. It was that I was asking for commitment before I'd given anyone a reason to commit.
What I built instead
I added a "Try it free - no signup" button alongside the existing sign up. One click and you're inside the app as a guest. No form, no friction, nothing.
As a guest you can create a client, set up a project, upload assets, and draft a license. Enough to get a genuine feel for the workflow - not a watered down demo, the actual product. When you hit something that needs an account (sending documents, the signature flow, payments) a prompt explains why and invites you to save your work and continue.
After 30 minutes, or when a gated feature is hit, a modal appears offering to save everything and pick a plan. The whole guest session - clients, projects, assets, licenses - carries over into their account automatically. Nothing is lost.
The thing I kept coming back to while building this: people aren't lazy, they're just careful with their time. A signup wall doesn't filter out bad users, it filters out good ones who haven't decided yet.
If you're early and unknown, earn the account - don't demand it.
Still early days on whether this moves the conversion needle meaningfully, but the drop-off at that first step is already gone. People are getting inside the product, which is the only place the product can actually sell itself.
Happy to answer questions if anyone's thinking through something similar.
www.crevaxo.com
Great insight. The trust problem is real —
asking for signup before showing value is like
asking someone to marry you on a first date.
Guest mode with session carry-over is smart.
I made the same mistake with my product early on.
The moment you remove friction from that first
step, everything changes.
I made it so you can use it without registering and I agree. Ive released over 15 tools and all are no registration free. I dont want to put personal info into unknown tools. I saw a post saying it stopped people from leaving but have any guests actually converted to paid?
to be completely transparent, not yet but I am noticing more engagement with this setup, I think one major problem for me personally is the product very niche so im shifting my focus to trying to engage with my target users directly, also proving to be easier said than done!
yeah reaching target users directly is the hardest part. i am in a completely different niche but hitting the same wall right now. but reading your original post again the guest session approach is really smart. most try before signup flows just reset everything but you are letting people keep the work they already did. that changes signup from giving something up to protecting what they already invested. licensing management for photographers is not something i have seen a dedicated tool for before so the positioning is solid. once the right users start finding you i think the product sells itself from there
The "guest mode with seamless carry-over" pattern is solid, and the detail that makes it work is that the gated features genuinely require an account (payments, signatures). I've seen this same pattern fail when people gate something artificial just to force signup after the user has already invested work — it feels like a bait-and-switch. Your list (send documents, signatures, payments) is the right kind of gating. Curious: how do you handle the guest session data if someone just closes the tab without upgrading? Persist for a while, or wipe immediately?
so right now, its on a 30 minute timer (timer pauses after some inactivity before resuming), the timer also persists if user closes browser, this counts as inactivity so the timer pauses for the duration the tab is closed, once re-opened the timer resumes, before any data is wiped the user is given the chance to sign up and save so they're not blind sided!
This level of transparency is exactly why I love Indie Hackers. I'm building a solo project called Dockit (AI infra generator), and I'm currently wrestling with the exact same 'Why are they bouncing?' problem. Your insights on the signing-up friction and what you changed are incredibly helpful as I rethink my own flow between landing and the generator. Thanks for sharing the hard lessons—it makes the journey less lonely for the rest of us
It's always tough when you spend time making something and see everyone leave before they even try it! At the end of the day its working through those harsh realities that pays off in the long run, glad my insight could help!
This is a really solid shift, the “earn the account” framing is spot on.
One thing I’ve been noticing though is that even after you remove that first friction, there’s still a second drop-off most people don’t expect:
people try the product once, get the value, and then… don’t come back.
So it becomes less of a signup problem and more of a habit problem.
What seems to work better is when the product gives users a reason to return, not just finish a task once.
Things like:
continue where you left off
small progress loops
or even lightweight reminders tied to what they already started
Basically turning that first session into something they feel they should complete or maintain.
Feels like your guest flow already creates a bit of that (since they’ve invested work), but I’m curious if you’ve thought about what pulls them back on day 2?
This is one of the best posts . "Earn the account, don't demand it" is exactly right. But soooo hard. I went through the same realization this week. I had a CSV upload behind an email gate as my free tool. Conversions were zilch. So I added an instant analyzer: paste 10 search terms, get AI results, no signup, no email, nothing. The engagement difference is night and day. Your guest session approach with automatic carryover into a real account is brilliant. I've also been thinking of creating a demo page for live interaction, actually. I guess that's the gold standard for product-led onboarding. I rad quite a few account from people who've done well that.
"Earn the account, don't demand it—that’s a powerful lesson for any early-stage founder. 📸 Letting users play with the actual licensing workflow before hitting a signup wall is a great way to build trust fast.
Nice idea, this could be a good way to test it further. There’s a competition where you can submit Crevaxo — entry is $19 and winner gets a Tokyo trip.
Prize pool just opened at $0 so your odds are the best right now."
there’s a telegram where people share real workflows for this: @OpenSerp
This is a really insightful approach — totally agree that earning the account is much more effective than demanding it upfront. I’ve noticed similar patterns with cloud tools: if users understand the workflow and see clear value quickly, they’re more likely to commit.
With Nubbo, our unified cloud storage manager, we try to make the first experience as smooth as possible once someone signs up. Clear onboarding and showing the workflow right away helps users see the value immediately, even though registration is required.
Did you measure how long users typically explore as guests before deciding to sign up?
One thing I'd measure next is not just signup rate, but guest-to-aha rate. If people create a client, draft a license, and then leave, that usually means the product is interesting but the account wall is still showing up before they feel the payoff. I'd track three moments separately: clicked guest mode, completed one meaningful workflow, and hit a gated action. That tells you whether the real bottleneck is trust, clarity, or timing. The no-signup entry was a smart move, but the bigger win is learning which action makes a careful visitor think, ok, now this is worth saving.
Totally agree, breaking it down like that makes a lot of sense. Tracking guest-to-aha moments seems way more insightful than just raw signup numbers. It highlights exactly where users feel value and where they hesitate.
The retention insight here is sharp. One underused angle: monitoring competitors' pricing page and feature changes right after your own churn spikes. Customers who leave often go to a specific competitor for a specific reason. Catching that signal early — before the churn — is the real win.
This is such a good insight — "people aren't lazy, they're just careful with their time." I'm building an earnings analysis tool and went through the same realization. My initial version required signup before you could see any scores. Conversion was terrible.
I ended up making the dashboard browsable without an account — you can see all the scored tickers, the beat/miss verdicts, and basic analysis. You only need to sign up when you want custom analysis or alerts. That one change completely shifted how people interact with the product.
The guest session carrying over into the account is really smart. That's something I want to implement — right now there's still a hard cutoff between browsing and the account-gated features. Your approach of earning the account instead of demanding it is the right framing.
Curious: have you seen any difference in retention between users who went through the guest flow vs. direct signups?
The guest experience approach you describe is something more SaaS founders should seriously consider. The psychology behind it is well-documented — the endowment effect means that once someone has invested time creating real data inside your product, they value their account much more than a blank slate signup ever would. I went through a nearly identical realization with a tool I worked on. We had a beautiful onboarding flow with 5 steps, email verification, profile setup — the whole thing felt polished but was basically a wall of friction before anyone could see the actual value. When we added a sandbox mode that let people use the core workflow immediately, our signup-to-active rate jumped noticeably. One thing worth watching: make sure the guest-to-account conversion prompt feels like a natural progression rather than a paywall moment. The timing matters a lot. Too early and it feels like a bait-and-switch, too late and people have gotten what they need without converting. Sounds like your 30-minute window plus gated feature triggers strike a good balance there.
You've hit the nail on the head for sure hehe. One of the things I've discovered over my years is that trust is everything, at least where it matters. Giving them the opportunity to try it out without gathering any detail is a pretty smart move. Like you said, time will tell if it results in conversions, but that will also allow you to figure out the next steps. One wall removed at least so good luck! :D