The brief
After launching the new plans (Free, Team and Enterprise), SonarQube Cloud continued to witness a large and growing free-plan base, with over 200,000 customers on the platform. But a very low percent of those users converted to a paid plan (Team/Enterprise). The Growth team wanted to understand why is this the case.
What I did
- Designed a combined in-product Sprig survey and semi-structured interview program targeting free-plan users. The survey captured behavioural signals and upgrade intent at scale; the interviews added the qualitative depth needed to understand the reasoning behind the numbers.
- Structured the research to explore not just what was blocking upgrades, but how users were actually using their free-plan projects — including the legitimate, deliberate reasons some users had no intention of upgrading.
- Pulled the findings into a brief deck that gave the team a clear segmentation of the free-plan audience, a ranked view of blockers, and specific opportunities for more contextual value communication.
- Launched a series of in-product experiments via LaunchDarkly based on the research findings. One experiment led to a 20% increase in the number of organisations actively using the platform, directly increasing engagement and usage.
What I found
- A large share of users said the free plan already met their needs. So, no real motivation to switch to a paid plan.
- Many teams were deliberately using free-plan projects as sandboxes for work that’s not directly tied to business e.g., projects still in R&D phase.
- Free plan users have some projects on a Team plan as that’s their way around budget limitations. This helped me refine and pivot the question in focus.
- Conversion wasn't primarily a pricing problem. It was a timing, relevance, and internal advocacy problem. Users needed to encounter the right feature at the right moment, and have a way to build a business case internally before being asked to upgrade.
The decisions this enabled
- The discussion changed from “why aren’t users converting from free to paid” to “how can we enable users with some projects in free plan to completely migrate to a paid plan”.
- Shifted the product and marketing conversation from generic upgrade nudges toward more contextual value communication, better on-boarding sequencing, and more deliberate trial and campaign timing.
- Directly informed the LaunchDarkly experiment roadmap, leading to the 20% increase in active organizations.