Creating my first paid features

I'm back with an update on Toad, my purposefully simple grid organiser.

For the last few weeks, the beta has been focused on one thing: proving that people want a "no-frills" alternative to the bloated project management tools we're all used to. The feedback has been fairly positive and I think that there is a gap in the market which differentiates itself from the standard project management offering.

One piece of feedback kept coming up, especially from professionals:

"I love the grid for my weekly reporting, but I have to set it up from scratch every single week."

They were right. Toad was simple, but for recurring work, it wasn't smart.

The Solution: The First "Frill That Matters"

Today, I'm launching the first feature that will be part of the paid "Personal" tier: Save as Template.

It's exactly what it sounds like. You can build the perfect grid once—whether it's for a weekly CFO report, a new client onboarding, or a marketing campaign—and then save it as a private template to reuse with one click.

This feature is the main justification for the £2/month Personal plan. The free plan will still have 2 grids, but the ability to have up to 10 grids and to save your own templates is what you'll pay for.

My Ask for the IH Community

I'd be incredibly grateful for your thoughts on this.

Is "Save as Template" a strong enough feature to justify a user's first payment?

Has anyone else navigated the tricky transition from a completely free product to one with a paid tier? How did you handle it?

As always, any fellow Indie Hackers who sign up and give feedback will get a free lifetime Personal account.

You can check it out here: https://www.meettoad.co.uk/

Cheers,

Tom