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Driving conversions with early plan visibility

Introduced a new plan selection step during sign-up to drive upgrades early and encourage intentional trials.

Challenge

Until now, most users entered Postman through the Free plan or unknowingly landed on a trial. Plan information appeared after onboarding, and upgrade prompts felt like interruptions, not invitations. This led to:

  • Poor awareness of paid plan benefits

  • Missed upgrade opportunities

  • Unintentional trial usage with no clear CTA

  • Drop-offs when users hit soft limits later

We wanted to enable users to pick how they want to experience Postman even before they land in the app.

Results

After introducing the new plan selection step during sign-up, we tracked early adoption patterns, user actions, and support feedback. These signals showed promising engagement and stronger upgrade intent from day one.

6%

of teams who clicked “Upgrade” converted within 3 months

33%

opted into a 30-day trial

48%

invited teammates within 7 minutes of trial start

Research to understand the chaos

Our research spanned multiple sources:

  • Support tickets with questions like “What plan am I on?”

  • Onboarding analytics showing plan CTAs went unnoticed

  • User interviews where many were unaware Postman even had multiple plans

Competitive analysis

We looked at how other SaaS tools like Figma, Dropbox, Zapier, and HBO Max surfaced pricing and trials up front. Common themes we found.

  • Always show a Free plan option

  • Let users compare side-by-side

  • Emphasize value, not just cost

  • Make both "Try" and "Buy" equally visible

Goals

We defined our success with three experience goals:

  1. Increase awareness of paid plans and their benefits

  2. Encourage upgrades during onboarding itself

  3. Let users intentionally opt in to a trial (not just fall into one)

Explorations and early concepts

All plans with individual CTAs

  • Users faced too much cognitive load and felt like an info dump

  • The Free plan stood out as the easiest option, defeating the goal

All plans with a shared CTA

  • Again, the Free plan card is the easy option

  • Trial messaging felt buried compared to Free’s simplicity

  • Internal feedback flagged the pricing toggle ("Pay annually") as overkill at this stage

  • People didn’t associate the radio with the next action button

Three plans without Enterprise

  • Visually simpler, but still centered too much attention on the Free plan

  • Lacked context about what users were choosing and why

  • Internal reviewers were confused about why this step existed

Paid-only plans (no Free)

  • Visually overwhelming due to competing CTA styles and highlight colors

  • Skipped over a critical decision: “Do I want Free, Trial, or Paid?”

  • Without Free visible, the experience felt pushy and lacked transparency

Final solution and experience

  • Plan picker appeared after team discovery to avoid disjointed team creation

  • Upgrade was the primary CTA, with trial as a secondary path

  • Free plan stayed visible but downplayed to encourage plan evaluation

  • Trial started with teammate invites to drive early collaboration

Upgrade-first by design

  • On the pricing screen, we led with “Upgrade” as the primary CTA for each plan

  • We designed the trial CTA as secondary. Still visible, but not dominant

  • The Free plan option was moved to the top-right, mirroring its placement in previous screens for familiarity and consistency

Better context through content

  • Started by clearly confirming that the user was on the Free plan

  • The CTA label “Select Plan” felt more inviting than “Upgrade” or “Buy.”

  • “No credit card needed” was placed right next to the trial CTA to build trust at the point of action

"Recommended" badge is contextual

  • The badge dynamically switches between Basic and Professional based on the user's email domain

  • Company domains see Professional highlighted, while public domains (like Gmail) see Basic

Trial starts with team invites

If a user picked “Try Free,” they didn’t just land on a dead-end confirmation. We showed a tailored trial start screen with:

  • Confirmation of the selected plan trial

  • A strong prompt to invite teammates right away

  • Moved users from intent to action right when interest was highest

Results

  • 6% of teams who clicked “Upgrade” converted within 3 months

  • 33% opted into a 30-day trial

  • 48% invited teammates within 7 minutes of trial start