Gated vs Ungated products. Learnings from our journey.

Imagine that every SaaS product you try is immediately understandable. You open it, use it, get value from it, and pay. There are no barriers and no confusion

Is this a utopia every startup dreams of?

Tools like invoice generators, word counters, PDF compressors, and online photo editors have achieved this. For instance, just type "invoice generator" in Google, click the first link, and start deriving value from it immediately. That’s it.

You wouldn’t expect an invoice generator to require you to go through a complex flow — reading the website, watching an explainer video, downloading a whitepaper, requesting a demo, going through the onboarding flow, jumping on a call with the account manager to upgrade, etc.

So why does this complexity exist in the SaaS world?

In this post, I'll explore how more complex products offer an invoice-generator-like simplicity.

Also, I'll share Graphy's story of launching a product without a website or sign-ups, diving into the data, and our key learnings.

Plus, I'll help you understand if an ungated model suits your product.

Examples of Successful Ungated Products

Let’s dive into a few examples. But first some short definitions.

Gated products - the traditional approach, tools that make you jump through hoops—sign up, fill forms, maybe even sit through a demo—before you can start using it.

Ungated products - think open doors. You walk right in, use the tool, no sign-ups, no hurdles. Instant access, instant value.

VEED.IO

Value: Veed is a fast and easy way to make professional-quality videos.

They ask you to sign up to download, share, and save videos to your workspace

Canva Templates

Value: Canva is an easy way to create and customize designs for any occasion.

They ask you to sign up to share your designs and save them to your workspace.

Codepen

Value: Codepen is for discovering and sharing snippets of frontend code for inspiration, testing and debugging.

They ask you to sign up to save your pens, or to view more than one page of search results.

Graphy’s Approach: Building an Ungated Product

For the first two years at Graphy, we followed a different approach. We had a waitlist with tens of thousands of users, gradually letting them access the product.

Users had to read our website and fill in a Typeform to request access. If they qualified, they’d receive a link to book a call with us. After spending 30 minutes on the call, they’d finally gain access to the tool. Reflecting on this now, it seems bonkers! 🤯

This approach created huge friction and limited our learning opportunities.

So, we radically changed our approach:

1. Knowing that data visualization is core to our product, we aimed for users to experience it within the first few seconds.

2. We built a super intuitive chart builder called Graphy Lite focused on creating beautiful, interactive, and easily shareable charts.

3. We removed our website, the sign-up flow, and any onboarding process.

4. We defined our activation point: when a user creates and then shares a chart.

5. We only asked users to sign up when they experienced the value of our tool and clicked the share button.

An early version of the ungated Graphy Lite.

Learnings

We had a lot of success with our ungated product for more than six months, but a month ago, we decided to gate it. Let's look at what we've learned and explore the reasons behind this decision.

Some definitions:

• Visitor: Someone who lands on the product or website.

• User: Someone who signs up with their credentials.

• Activated: A user who creates and then shares a chart.

What percentage of our visitors signed up?
As you can see in the chart below when we had the ungated product, an average of 25% of visitors signed up. After we turned off the ungated product, we saw about 35% of visitors sign up, a clear 10% increase in signups.

From the users who signed up, how many of them were activated?
Again, you can observe a very clear trend in the chart below: activation dropped from 28% to 21%. So, there's a noticeable decrease of just under 10%.

So, we observed a 10% increase in signups and a 10% decrease in activation, which you can visualize on the same chart.

And that’s what we expected: more users signing up to explore the tool, but also a larger proportion of users not activating. This is because with the ungated version, they first have to try the product and if they then sign up, they’re more likely to activate.

Now the question is: what percentage of visitors (not users) get activated, going through the entire flow?

To answer this question, let’s look at the end-to-end flow – from someone landing on the website (visitor) to then ultimately sharing a chart (activation).

And the answer? It's surprisingly similar for both gated and ungated products! So, do more people activate with the gated or ungated product? For us, it appears that the rate of visitor activation is pretty much the same for both.

Conclusion

So why did we transition to a gated product?

It's because our product is becoming more mature; we're transitioning from a chart builder to helping our customers create boards using data from other sources, which is a more complex experience. Currently, it’s just how we allocate our resources (focus! focus! focus!). Would we like to bring back the ungated product someday? Yes!

But, the reality is that companies want to be able to communicate with their users and follow up. Ungating a product gives up this control.

However, it’s a better experience for the users – they access the product quickly, without any friction.

On the surface, it appears that it's as good for business goals.

Is the Ungated approach right for you?

When to Consider an Ungated Product:

• Rapid Validation: Ideal for quick learning and testing ideas before fully committing to more complex developments.

• Reducing Friction: If you cut down on complexity, users are more inclined to try and share your product, leading to better user acquisition.

• Focus on Jobs-to-Be-Done: More suitable when addressing specific user needs rather than targeting an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

• Economics of Scale: Beneficial if your business model thrives on high volume usage.

When an Ungated Product Might Not Be Ideal:

• Niche Focus: Not recommended if your product is tailored for a very specific, well-defined market segment.

• Inherent Complexity: Less suitable if your product's value proposition requires a certain level of initial complexity or guided onboarding.

• Limited Data-Driven Learning: Not ideal if you need detailed user analytics. In ungated products, it's harder to track user behavior, understand returning users, or follow up with them, limiting insights for targeted improvements.