why i didn't create a free tier for PublicHabits

everyone told me to add a free tier.

"how else will people try it"

"you need a funnel"

"freemium is standard for consumer apps"

i get it. i ignored it. PublicHabits is $9/mo, no free tier, no trial. here's why.

free users don't build habits, they build churn

i've been building software for close to a decade. i know what "free" does to usage data. free users open the app once, forget their password, and never come back. they cost you support time, server load, and dashboard noise. they are not your product's problem to solve.

PublicHabits works on 3 cognitive biases, and all three break if the product is free.

the hawthorne effect

you act differently when you know you're being observed. that's the whole app. you log a habit, it shows up on a webpage, anyone you shared the link with can check if you did the thing today.

but here's the thing: observation only changes behaviour if you actually care about being observed. if the app is free, you don't care. you signed up in 4 seconds and you'll churn in 4 days. there's no skin in the game, so there's no behaviour change. the effect needs stakes to work. $9/mo is the stakes.

commitment and consistency bias

when you publicly commit to something, you're way more likely to follow through, because backing out now means admitting to yourself (and whoever's watching) that you were wrong.

you make a public commitment in-app, but paying for the tool is ALSO the commitment. you didn't just sign up, you pulled out a credit card and said "i'm doing this." that's a much stronger public/private commitment than clicking "start free trial," which everyone knows is a lie you tell yourself. free trials are the least committal action a human can take on the internet. i wasn't going to build a commitment device on top of the least committal action possible. that's backwards.

endowment effect

you value things more once you own them. classic behavioural econ, the mug experiment, all that. people things more because they own it.

if PublicHabits is free, you don't own anything. you're a tourist. the second sticking to your habits gets annoying, you leave, no loss, no regret, no endowment.

if you're paying $9/mo, you own a habit building system you invested real money into. quitting now doesn't just mean losing an app, it means admitting you wasted money on your own self-improvement. that stings way more than losing a free account ever could. the payment is what makes the loss feel real, which is what makes you stick around.

so no, there's no free tier

not just because i want to make money (ok but that's a big part of it). because the free tier would quietly kill the exact mechanisms that make the product work. a free version of PublicHabits isn't a lite version of the product, it's a broken version of the product.

$9/mo. no trial. no free plan. cancel anytime, but you won't, because you paid for it, you said you'd do it publicly, and now people are watching.

built solo. built in public. publichabits.com