I went from $0 to 50+ users, then made it free forever. Here's what I learned.
I'm a solo founder from India. A few weeks ago I launched a WordPress automation tool. No investors. No audience. Just me building in my spare time.
Here's the honest timeline:
Week 1 — 0 users. Posted on communities manually. DMed bloggers one by one. Felt like shouting into a void.
Week 2 — First 10 users. All from direct outreach. No paid ads. No viral moment.
Week 3 — Hit 50+ users. Paid plan. People were using it daily.
Then I made it free. Forever.
Why?
The tool lets users connect their own AI API key — so the real cost to them is already $0 if they use Gemini's free tier. Charging on top of that felt dishonest. I'd rather have 1000 genuine users who give me feedback than 50 who churn silently.
3 things I learned getting to 50 users from India:
Manual outreach beats every growth hack. I personally messaged 50+ people. Most ignored me. 6 replied. 3 became users. That's how it starts.
Going free is scary but freeing. The anxiety about churn disappeared overnight. Now I just focus on making it better.
Building from India means zero network advantage — but the product still has to stand on its own. That's actually a good forcing function.
Current status:
Users: 50+
Revenue: ₹0 (intentional for now)
Goal: 100 users and brutal feedback
👉 rudnex.in — free, no credit card
My question for IH: Has anyone else gone fully free early on? Did it help you grow faster, or did it attract the wrong users?
I took a look at Rudnex, and I think the biggest growth risk is not that you went free, it’s that the page still sells like an expensive SEO machine while the post sells an honest low-friction utility.
A few things I’d tighten:
The hero is broad and a little disbelief-heavy. "Let AI write 1,000 SEO blog posts for you" reads like mass-content software, which makes people immediately wonder about quality and spam risk. The more believable wedge is something like "BYOK WordPress autoblogging for site owners who want live-fact research + internal linking without another $99/mo tool."
Put one real generated post example above the fold. Right now visitors have to trust a lot of claims before seeing proof. Show one article output, one internal-linking example, and one before/after editing view.
I’d remove or soften the "$2,000/mo SEO agency" testimonial unless it is very obviously real and attributable. That line creates instant skepticism on a product you’re asking people to trust with publishing.
Your "free forever" story is actually strong, but the site hides the reason. The honest angle is: bring your own key, pay your model directly, no markup from us while we earn trust. I’d say that much earlier.
Narrow the first buyer. Right now it feels like bloggers, SEOs, agencies, WooCommerce stores, everyone. I’d pick one first, maybe affiliate/content site owners publishing at least a few posts a week.
I do think free early can work, but only if the page makes the trust model obvious fast, otherwise free just attracts curious clicks instead of committed users.
If helpful, I run a very cheap teardown offer and can do a sharper homepage roast for US$1: https://roastmysite.io/go.php?src=external_manual_ih_rudnex_freeforever_apr23_usd_presell_hv
thanks to tell me this in that much deep