Long story short, our SaaS [0] has been free for a few years. We're now transitioning into paid plans.<p>We've started charging new users and the conversion rate has been good. Now the question is, how do we transition our existing free users? There is a chance some people are gonna get pissed (even though they've been using our service for free).<p>Are there any best practices on what to do in such a situation? The first thing that comes to mind is to offer a discount on the yearly plan. Anything else?<p>[0] - https://lookastic.com
The best I can recommend is allow the free tier to move away their data locally (export): not sure if that makes sense in your context. That reduces the chances of them becoming pissed off (I always liked the distinction between British and US "pissed" though :)), even though it won't help with conversions much.<p>I don't think it's such a big deal anymore: users are already conditioned to expect entire free services to be gone tomorrow (somehow Google with Plus, Reader... comes to mind ;), so moving to being there but paid is not such a big deal.<p>Unless you promised it will be free forever (eg for beta testers etc).
You can check episode E1088 of This Week in Startups for some ideas: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OlrMNp90fc&t=1289s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OlrMNp90fc&t=1289s</a>
From 4:50 on the founder is taking about their transition from completely free to app with paid features.