How to run a feedback board for a freemium app without paying per voter

Freemium means most accounts may never pay. Some feedback tools still bill by tracked user, so that free audience can raise the invoice.

Run the board anyway. Let free users say what is missing. Keep them distinct from paying accounts. Do not pay per voter.

Collecting requests without a spreadsheet covers fields, statuses, and the weekly review. Counting customers rather than votes covers the decision after the votes exist. This note is about the audience and the bill.

What a tracked user is

A tracked user is a person the feedback tool can identify: an account, a signed-in visitor, or someone who opened the portal, depending on the vendor. Read that definition before you compare prices. "User" on a pricing page is not a casual word.

The shared pattern is simpler than the fine print. The bill follows how many people the tool can see, often with a monthly cap. Cross the cap and the plan changes.

That model can fit a product sold to a known team. A freemium product is different. Most accounts may never pay, and a tracked-user plan can still count them if they open the board. The audience got bigger. The operation did not. The invoice followed the audience.

Why the free audience shows up on the invoice

You want free users on the board. They can tell you what is keeping them from paying, and they hit rough edges that a paying team has already worked around. Hide the board behind a paid plan and you will mostly hear from people who have already decided to pay.

So the board is available to anyone with an account, or it is public. That is a reasonable product choice. It is an awkward choice if the vendor meters every identified person. A launch, a classroom, or a useful free tier can move the count without moving revenue.

Closing the board, sampling users, or turning identification off each gives something up. A closed board brings back the private spreadsheet. An anonymous vote cannot get the shipped email, because there is nowhere to send it. Let people in, and pay for the operation: boards, admins, sign-in for your team, a domain you control. Not a rate that multiplies by voters.

What to pay for instead

Ask this in writing before you embed anything: if the free audience doubles and the team does not, what happens to the invoice?

If the answer is "you move up a tier," you are looking at a tracked-user plan, whatever the page calls it. If the answer is "the price stays put, and here is what is actually limited," compare those limits to the work. Boards, admin controls, SSO, and a custom domain match the work. A limit that tracks the size of the audience is the surprise.

FlatVote prices the operation. Starter is $19 a month, or $190 a year, for 1 board and unlimited voters. Team is $49 a month, or $490 a year, for 5 boards, SSO, a custom domain, and unlimited admins. Annual billing is two months free. There is no free plan, including no free tier that starts metering voters after the board is already public. Another tool is a fair choice if its answer to the question above is a flat figure.

Who gets to post and vote

Let free users post and vote if the board should reflect the product they use. You can still require an email so the shipped notice has somewhere to go. An email is not a paid plan. "Upgrade to vote" is a different product.

Public boards attract spam and support questions. Remove spam, merge duplicates, and move bugs during the weekly review. Unlimited voters means the invoice does not climb. It does not mean every post stays up. Write the removal rules down. Do not delete free users' requests just to make the board look like a paying-customer list. Filter when you decide. Keep the raw board.

Read two counts, not one total

A vote from a free account and a vote from a paying account are both real, and they are not the same fact. If the tool can show which voters are on a paid plan, use that as a second count. If it cannot, match the posts you are about to discuss, and leave the rest unmarked. Do not guess.

Once a month, take the posts with the most votes and write down how many voters you can match to a paid plan, how many you can match to a free account, and how many are unknown. A rough pass is more honest than the vote sort. Unknown is a fact. "Probably free" is a story.

A request that is common among free users and rare among paying users might explain why people do not pay, or it might belong only to the free plan. You cannot tell if you deleted those votes to spare a meter. A spike from one thread or one class is real, and it is not a sample of the whole audience. Note the spike, then see who else voted.

One board, unless the audiences do not overlap

One product usually needs one board. A second board feels tidy until the same request exists in both places and the votes split. People will not check two URLs.

Open another board only when the audiences do not overlap, such as two products, or an admin tool and an end-user product. FlatVote Starter includes 1 board. Team includes 5. Do not open a new board to reset a chart. Change the status and leave the history in place. If you run more than one, say what belongs on each, and review all of them. The one you skip will rot.

Leave a metered tool before the cap arrives

Export before you are against a cap, not after. Caps show up in the same week as a launch. FlatVote can import a CSV, and it can import through the Canny API, so a Canny board does not have to be retyped. The CSV columns will be documented before the ship date. They are not on this site yet, so do not promise the team a migration you have not seen.

Import while both systems still work. Check a sample of posts for the original wording, the old status, and the voters. Point the public URL at the new board, leave a pointer on the old one, and stop taking new posts in both places. A long overlap splits the vote, because the old URL stays in search results.

What the flat price does not include

It does not include your time or your strategy. Someone still does the weekly review, and a flat invoice does not make a stale status honest. The board shows what people asked for. It does not know what you are willing to maintain. The shipped email on FlatVote should stay a notice: what shipped, and a link. Do not turn it into a campaign.

A cadence that survives a larger free plan

Each week, read new posts, merge duplicates, move bugs, and write one sentence on declines. Each month, split the loudest posts into paying, free, and unknown. Change a status the day you decide, because a large audience will quote the old one. If the free audience doubles, confirm the invoice did not move, then ask whether the new people are requesting the same things.

The ship date, the Founding Team terms, and both prices are on the home page. FlatVote has not shipped. Until it has, the part you can practice is the habit: one URL, free users included, paid and unpaid counts kept apart, and a person who is allowed to say no once a week.