About Redbooth
Redbooth is a task management SaaS product, that offered a 30 day free trial to users focusing on enterprise. By the time this project was completed it would have to be suited to offer a free option focusing on marketing and creative agencies.
On our switch to Freemium, there were a lot of moving parts. We didn’t only have to worry about providing a great experience for those users trying a free, limited version of Redbooth and making compelling yet subtle cases for an upgrade but also cater to those users on a paid plan looking to downgrade.
The first business thought was easy, let them struggle so they won't downgrade but from the user experience angle there were some compelling arguments to make that experience shine. Free users are still users and if a paid version is not working out for them, then lets make sure that we give them a great experience so that they will tell other people about it.
The problem
In order for users to downgrade from a paid plan to free plan need to first meet the free plan limitations, a maximum of 10 users, 5 projects and 2gb of storage. These requirement need to be met without disrupting the content that has been created by the user and in a way that does not create so much friction that may lead to leaving the product.
The solution
Build and experience where downgrade is not the focus and offers the same inclusiveness as those users upgrading. Let them pick a plan that suits them best, in this case free, and give them full control of their content in a simple solution that lives outside the product.
Mapping the solution
The pricing page was already built with an old code and poorly maintained, upgrades and downgrade were happening manually through customer support, and there was no free plan involved. This was the perfect opportunity to start over and create a simple, uniform experience for all.
Designing the Solution
We got together with the marketing team to analyze previous tests and success rate of the marketing site’s pricing page and sketched up solutions based on that. Some additional exploratory research was done to understand how our competition converted their free trials.
The result was straightforward and recognizable as a pricing page. While at it, I added meaningful interactions that I gave the users a sense of place and the freedom to switch between options.
What Else?
The next step was to address the downgrade cases and how to walk users through the process of meeting the requirements of a free plan.
We reused and combined the components that existed in the settings page, this way, users would quickly know what to do and developers could tackle it inexpensively. Before we got to the final design we experimented a few options, the final version shown below was clear enough that it did not create friction for users downgrading but it also added enough steps and messages that would make them reconsider their decision before downgrading.