The problem I was hired to solve
SonarQube Cloud had a large and growing free-plan base — over 200,000 customers on the platform. But conversion to Team and Enterprise plans was lower than expected. Generic upgrade nudges weren't working. The team needed to understand what was actually preventing conversion, and what product and marketing levers could move it.
What I did
- Mixed-method research sprint: Designed a combined in-product Sprig survey and semi-structured interview programme 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.
- Behavioural and motivational mapping: 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.
- Conversion barriers synthesis: Pulled the findings into a conversion barriers 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.
- In-product experimentation: 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
- The biggest blocker wasn't price — it was perceived fit. A large share of users said the free plan already met their needs, and they were right: they were using it exactly as intended for their current scale of work.
- Many teams were deliberately using free-plan projects as sandboxes — for pre-revenue work, onboarding new team members, or separating sensitive production code (on paid plans) from exploratory or lower-stakes projects.
- A recurring theme: users wanted to experience paid-tier value in context before committing to a conversation with procurement or leadership. A pricing page wasn't enough — they needed in-product proof.
- 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
- Gave the team a clear, evidence-backed segmentation of the free-plan audience — replacing assumptions about who was on free and why.
- Shifted the product and marketing conversation from generic upgrade nudges toward more contextual value communication, better onboarding sequencing, and more deliberate trial and campaign timing.
- Directly informed the LaunchDarkly experiment roadmap, leading to the 20% increase in active organisations.
- Showed that conversion strategy needed to account for feature relevance, timing, and internal advocacy — not just price — which changed how the team thought about what to build and when.