Should I introduce freemium?

Hi all 👋

Just launched preorders for my niche booking SaaS (https://climbhive.com). I signed my first couple of customers on annual contracts (yay!), but wondering about having a freemium model. I know this is generally not a good idea for small products like this, but there are a few positives that are industry-specific:

• Price sensitive market who are always looking for cheaper options.
• Competitors who offer a 'commission only' model that is free but a cut is taken per booking.
• The obvious lead generation benefit.

Our key value metric is bookings/month for our main Bookings product, but we also offer a pretty extensive Team Management offering where the value metric is the number of staff on the team.

With this in mind, I was considering a FREE tier with 3.5% commission and no team management features. My main worry, which may be dumb, is people taking advantage of this tier and having it lead to nothing but server fees.

Would love to hear your thoughts. I'm more than happy to drop more info and answer any questions.

Cheers guys, stay well.