Spotify’s freemium model means they can play music, but the ads, limited to shuffle mode, and no offline mode make it mildly inconvenient (though not enough to drop the app). The free app also lacks social features. This means people are encouraged to pay for the app, as they may want to play songs in any order or unlock the rest of the features. They are reminded of this when they click on a paywalled feature.
Figma’s model gives people designing solo the same power as any other Figma user (with the only limitation being three pages per design). As a result, Figma encourages designers to learn it because it’s free, and then, when they join a company, they will want to continue using it, without having to pay for team usage when other team members use it too.
Lastly, The NY Times lets you read the hook for the story, then charges a wall for the rest of the story once youhave reached a max number of articles, prompting you to log in for more free articles and then subscribe for unlimited access. This hinges on the articles being interesting enough to pay for. You can pay only for the news part, or pay a higher fee for games and other features.
In all of the casesa bove it is about hooking the user just long enough so that when they start to extract value they need to start paying, they just all act on different pivots.
