How Life360 Thinks About Freemium vs. Hard Paywall (With 100M Users)

With 100 million users, Life360 could flip a switch and dramatically grow its subscriber base overnight — but it deliberately chooses not to. In this clip, Life360's CPO explains why the company keeps its free tier genuinely generous, how network effects make a large free user base a competitive moat, and the internal framework they use to decide which features belong behind a paywall and which should stay free for everyone. He also shares a real example: cutting location history from 2 days to 6 hours would have doubled subscriber conversions — and they still said no. More content from the RevenueCat family: 👉 Launched – Our sister show that features indie app developers and solo creators about what it really takes to ship something new into the world:    / @launchedfm   👉 StartApp School – Practical courses on monetization, growth, acquisition, and everything else that turns an app into a business. Completely free: https://www.startapp.school/ 👉 RevenueCat blog: Hard paywall vs. freemium: lessons from a 75% LTV lift: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growt... 👉 6 steps to design a freemium tier that drives upgrades: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growt... 👉 Why a hard paywall is the right answer for your app (until it isn't): https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growt... *Timecodes* 0:00 – Hard paywalls convert 5x better, so why does Life360 stay freemium? 1:10 – The mission reason: safety features should be accessible to everyone 1:45 – The business reason: network effects and the free-user moat 2:30 – 3% of MAU are subscribers, but ~12% benefit from a subscription 3:05 – Adding friction vs. adding value: Life360's philosophy 3:40 – The location history test: doubling subscribers by cutting a feature (and why they didn't) 4:40 – The "freemium trap" — Duolingo's CPO calls it the same thing 5:10 – How Life360 decides: free feature vs. paid feature 6:15 – The rule: if it's expensive to provide, it's premium; if it's software, start free Subscribe to the podcast → https://www.subclub.co Follow Us: • David Barnard:   / drbarnard   • Jacob Eiting:   / jeiting   • RevenueCat:   / revenuecat   • Sub Club:   / subclubhq