🧠 How to grow your SaaS by building free tools
Tags: webdev, watercooler, discuss, tutorial
Published: 2023-09-22 20:24:45

Hey all!

Charlie here 👋

All SaaS businesses inevitably go through periods of **stagnated growth.**

An awesome way to combat this is to **build free tools** into new growth channels.

Today I’m going to break down **how and why** this strategy works.

Plus I’ll show you the **top SaaS platforms** using it to grow.

This week in IdeaHub…

- **The free tool strategy:** _How free tools are amazing growth channels._

- **Best ways to use free tools:** _How to use free tools to test new ideas and create SEO goldmines._

- **Free tools in action:** _The OG in free tools and one solo founder having massive success._

Let’s jump in… 👇

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## 1. The free tool strategy

It’s important to understand we’re not talking about free trials here.

We’re talking about **separate free versions** of paid-for products that require no signup whatsoever.

You might be thinking to yourself:

“How can that be of any use to my business?”

Well, to answer that, you have to understand two big reasons customers **resist buying** your product:

1. They **don’t trust** you and/or your product to solve their problem.

2. They can’t see results **quickly enough** to make a buying decision.

Building a separate free tool instantly breaks down both of these barriers.

Firstly, a free tool is much **easier to trust** as there is ‘no harm done’ if it doesn’t work out.

Secondly, having no signup, payments or onboarding means customers can see the power of your product **much more quickly.**

All this means you have a better chance of customers trying out your free tool than your core product.

The trick is to heavily **limit the feature set** of the free tool and include a strong call to action to drive customers back to your paid-for product.

This naturally means **more signups** overall than if you had no free tool at all.

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## 2. The best ways to use free tools

Free tools can provide more than just a growth channel.

They can be **real assets** in a few different ways:

**Testing new ideas**

Say you’re at a crossroads.

You’re trying to decide whether to expand your product into a new niche or stay put and double down on your efforts.

It’s a **big decision** to make and could have a huge impact on your future success.

Instead of choosing to go all-in on one or the other, you could **spin off** your core product into a free tool and use it to validate the new market.

If it shows promise, fold it back into your paid-for product, or simply ditch it if it doesn’t work out.

**Building SEO**

Free tools have huge search volumes.

We’ve all searched _“free tool for [X]”_ when we know what we need, but we just don’t want to pay…

![Search results for free tools](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/w3x5irc5empyig61uu8a.png)

Launching a free tool therefore provides the perfect opportunity to **match searcher intent** and start driving organic traffic.

Plus, if it’s on a separate domain, you can start creating **backlinks** back and forth from your paid-for product in all of your blog posts.

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## 3. Free tools in action

**Ahrefs**

The SaaS that made this strategy famous is [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/).

It’s the number one platform for marketers to research new SEO opportunities.

Almost every vertical feature in their paid-for product is also available as a **free tool.**

It’s especially important as their products are aimed at users who **aren’t usually the buying decision-makers** in a business.

So when the free tools deliver value, marketers can evidence this to the real decision-makers.

And Ahrefs get the benefit of leveraging the **existing trust circles** of the organisation to close deals.

**Pally**

[Pally](https://pallyy.com/) is a social media management tool built by solo founder [Tim Bennetto](https://twitter.com/Timb03).

So far he’s built 9 (!) free tools each focusing on one feature of Pally.

But he’s also taking a unique approach:

He’s **acquiring free tools** as well as building them himself.

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