Inform your users in advance
According to previous experience after a plugin developer changes its payment model to freemium or paid - it’s crucial to inform the users in advance.
Otherwise, your current users could post negative comments and give the poor ratings to a plugin, just because they used to use it as a free solution.
In order to avoid such a negative reaction, we recommend informing your users in advance. You can use the following sources:
Plugin description
Before releasing a paid version, you may add information about your plans to the plugin description, so your new users and those who update to a new version will be able to see this information.
Custom pages
It’s a universal communication tool that allows you to post blog articles, updates, and even documentation. Here is an example of how you could do this.
Features comparison
If you want to become a freemium plugin it is highly recommended to provide info on which features will be available for free and which are available after purchase. Use this template to add it to your plugin description:
Free
Freemium
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Code analysis
Other resources
If you have an email base of your users, that have explicitly provided consent for email communications, you should definitely notify them via email in advance. Use other resources to communicate with your users: Slack workspace, Discord server, Git repository README, Twitter account, etc. By gathering feedback from users, you may also find out whether they are fine with your pricing model or if you need to adjust it.