ProfitWell gives away subscription metrics free to feed paid products

What they ran

ProfitWell offered ProfitWell Metrics, a revenue reporting tool for subscription and SaaS companies, at no cost, per Paddle's product page. Users can compare their numbers against a benchmark set of 30,000 subscription and SaaS companies. The free tool was not the business model on its own. In Patrick Campbell's Business of Software talk, he says the company made its money by studying the data from the free product and building paid tools that automate churn reduction and price optimization.

What happened

Campbell says about 35,000 SaaS and subscription companies now get their financial metrics free through the product. The talk description says ProfitWell supplies financial metrics to 20% of the subscription market.

What the account does not show

The 35,000 figure is a later, self-reported number from the founder, and it does not say when the free tool launched or how fast usage grew. The 20% share comes from the talk description, with no stated method. Paddle's page uses a different count, 30,000, and is undated. Neither source gives a baseline, a conversion rate from the free tool to the paid products, or revenue from those paid products.