Why doBoard Doesn’t Have a Free Plan and Why That’s Better
Why doBoard Skipped the Free Plan
At least once a week, someone emails us or drops a message in our support chat:
“Hey, do you have a free plan? I’m looking for a free project management software with an opportunity to upgrade later”
It’s a completely reasonable question. Open any list of “top project management software 2026” and you’ll see the same pattern: free tier, basic tier, professional tier, enterprise tier. Free project management software seems to be the standard now, right?
We built doBoard differently. We do have a 7-day free trial so teams can test everything out before committing. But we don’t have a permanent free tier.
Here’s the thing we kept coming back to when we were figuring out our pricing: in freemium models, paying customers end up covering the costs for everyone on the free tier. The more we looked at it, the less that felt right to us.
Let me explain what we mean.
Here’s What Most Companies Won’t Tell You About Freemium
When you sign up for a free account somewhere, you’re still using real resources. Those accounts need storage space on servers, they consume bandwidth, they generate support tickets when something breaks, and they require ongoing development work to maintain the features being used.
Someone pays for all of that.
In a freemium model, it’s both the paying customers and free users, but they pay in different ways.
If you’re a paying customer, part of your monthly payment goes toward subsidizing users who might never convert to paid plans. Industry data shows conversion rates around 2-4% for most freemium SaaS products. So if you’re paying, you’re essentially covering costs for roughly 25-50 free users.
And if you’re on the free tier? You might think you’re getting a great deal, but there’s another side to it. The project management tools market is highly competitive, and companies need ways to monetize those free accounts. One common approach is sharing user data with third parties. Typically, it’s anonymized or aggregated, and yes, it’s mentioned somewhere in the terms of service. But it’s rarely highlighted. The practice exists, and the risks that come with it exist too.
So while you’re on a free plan, you’re partially paying for your account with your data.
And when you eventually upgrade to paid? You’re paying premium rates because the pricing needs to cover up to 50 subsidized free users.
When we were designing doBoard’s pricing, we asked ourselves: is that fair? Should our paying users be subsidizing everyone else? Should we put our users at even a small risk by sharing their data with other companies to partially offset costs?
We didn’t think so.
Traditional Freemium | doBoard's Approach |
Free users subsidized by paid users | Everyone pays a modest amount, everyone gets full value |
Features locked behind paywalls | All features included, always |
Complex pricing tiers | Price only changes with storage needs |
Upsells and add-ons | No hidden costs |
What Our $5 Plan Actually Includes
Instead of a free tier with limited features and then premium pricing for the “real” product, we flipped it around.
Our base plan is $5 per month. That gets our users:
There’s no fine print. We don’t have enterprise-only features that suddenly appear when you hit a certain company size. We don’t make people talk to sales to unlock capabilities. What you see on our pricing page is what everyone gets.
The only thing that changes our pricing is storage space. Everything else is already included.
Need 20GB? That’s $15/month. Need 75GB? $50/month. The full breakdown is always visible on our pricing page.
Same complete feature set at every tier. Just more space when needed.
The Part Where We Admit This Makes Our Job Harder
We’re not going to pretend this pricing model is easy for us.
Companies with freemium models can pour money into advertising because their math works differently. They’re playing a volume game. Acquire 100,000 free users promising a free project management software through ads and influencer deals, convert 3% to paid plans, and boom, you’ve got 3,000 paying customers. The economics work.
We can’t play that game.
Spending hundreds in ads to acquire someone who pays us $5/month? The math just doesn’t work. We grow slower than companies with venture money and freemium funnels. We can’t be everywhere. We don’t have billboards or mass influencer promotion.
In a market where billion-dollar companies use free tiers as user acquisition engines, we’re taking a completely different path.
We believe this approach is more fair to our users.
Why We Believe This Approach Works Better for Our Users
What We’re Actually Trying to Build Here
When we started working on doBoard, we were frustrated with what we saw in the market. Project management tools were either absurdly expensive or had pricing structures that felt deliberately confusing. Pay per user, pay per feature, pay per integration.
But beyond pricing, many tools had become bloated with features that small and medium teams rarely use. The complexity was overwhelming and distracting from actual work.
We wanted to build something different.
A simple, functional product without feature bloat. Clear, predictable pricing that doesn’t require a spreadsheet to understand.
We focus on core project management capabilities that teams actually need, and we price based on one variable: storage space. This keeps both the product and the pricing straightforward.
doBoard is built for small to medium businesses, not enterprises. We’re not trying to be everything to everyone. We’re focused on making a good, user-friendly, and accessible product for teams that need effective project management without enterprise complexity or enterprise pricing.
And because we’re a smaller company, we’re genuinely open to feedback. When our users suggest features or report issues, there’s a real chance they’ll see those implemented. We’re not a massive organization where feedback disappears into a black hole.
That means no permanent free tier. But it also means no games, no hidden paywalls, no “enterprise features” when some of those look more like basic functionality that should be available to everyone.
So, Bottom Line
Could we make more money with freemium? Probably.
Could we grow faster? Maybe.
But we’d be building a product where some users subsidize others. That didn’t feel right when we were making these decisions, and it still doesn’t feel right now.
$5/month gets our users everything doBoard offers. The full product. Every feature. The only thing that costs more is storage space.
That’s it. That’s the model.
Honest pricing. Honest product.
Want to see if doBoard works for your team?
Start with our $5/month plan. You get 7 days to try everything without entering a credit card.
FAQ
Yes! Please read our Free Project Management Software for Nonprofits:
The Impact Program page. Or reach out to us at we*****@*****rd.com and we’ll figure something out.
That’s fine. Cancel whenever. We don’t do penalties.
Absolutely. Upgrade or downgrade whenever you need to.
Yes! doBoard is designed to be straightforward and easy to use without requiring a dedicated admin or extensive setup time.
You can explore our full feature list here, see use cases across different industries here, and check out our Solutions page to learn how doBoard works for different teams and businesses.
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