u/tomaszhsk

My friend and I build a wedding planning app called Celebrate in the evenings, after our families are asleep. We're devs, not marketers, and every launch so far has landed with a quiet thud.

Here's what the last 90 days looked like:

• 121 people signed up
• 45 seated at least one guest in the seating planner
• 24 hit the paywall
• 3 clicked upgrade
• 1 reached checkout

The seating planner is clearly what people come for. But it sat behind a signup and then a paywall, so most people put in the work and left with nothing. We got only 4 users that paid all time.

So we moved it to a public page:

1. Drop in your guest list from Excel, or try sample guests
2. Add tables, drag people onto seats
3. No account needed. Your guest list stays in your browser unless you decide to save it

It's free for up to 50 seated guests. Bigger weddings are a one-time payment of [price], no subscription. You only need an account to save, print, or go past 50.

This is a bet, not a result yet. What I'd love your take on:

1. Price: is 25 usd / 80 PLN one-time too much for what the tool does? Or is the problem that the paywall shows up at the wrong moment? The idea was it's not only a seating planner, rather a wedding planning tool, so 25$ one-time for up to 2 years seemed fair to us.
2. Missing features: if you tried it and still wouldn't pay, what was missing? Anything you'd expect from a seating planner that isn't there.
3. Where to put the gate: on guest count, on saving and printing, or somewhere else?
4. Screenshot risk: someone builds their plan on the free tier, screenshots it, and never comes back. Is that just the cost of a no-signup tool?

I'll share what happens either way. Link in the first comment.