Draftss Grew Revenue 2.5x by Experimenting With Pricing and Free Trials

Who built it, and what they built

Draftss is a subscription-based design and code service run by Junaid Ansari and Amin Memon out of Mumbai. The company started in April 2018 and has grown to a team of 28 members, serving brands, startups, small businesses, freelancers, agencies, and enterprises.

On the design side, Draftss covers logo and branding, web and app UX/UI, illustrations, and other graphic design. For code, it handles WordPress, Webflow, HTML/CSS, and no-code page builders. Startups and agencies are its ideal customers because they bring the most revenue and have higher lifetime value.

How they grew

Since its previous Starter Story feature, Draftss increased revenue by 2.5x to $160,000+ ARR, with its best month in August 2021 at $17.8k MRR. A feature on Starter Story the prior year brought momentum, eyeballs, networking connections, guest posts, and backlinks.

One of the strategies that worked best was upselling existing customers to higher-value or longer-duration plans, which raised ARPU and LTV. The team also experimented with a 7-day free trial without requiring a credit card, offered only on the Design Plan, promoted through an emailer to subscribers, posts in a few Facebook groups, and an exit-intent popup on the website.

The trial produced a 20-24% increase in MRR from new customers, grew the prospect email list, and won over some customers who had been using competitors. Of everyone who signed up for the free trial, 34% liked the designs and signed up for a plan, 22% did not respond after sending their first task, 20% did not sign up for any plan, 16% liked the designs but had not signed up yet, and 8% never sent across their tasks.