Whether to go with a freeium model is another "it depends" topic and there's too many factors to give general advice, the same for questions like "How much should I charge for my product?", "What's the best way to market my product?" and "What framework should I use to code my product?".
I run a freeium Chrome extension (https://www.checkbot.io/) for checking website SEO, speed and security factors where I have the free plan without sign up for multiple reasons 1) low friction so users can try it out first 2) users may be more likely to share and recommend it for quickly checking website issues 3) there's free tools in this space so it may be harder to ask for payment upfront. I'm generally not finding the cost of the free users high.
For another product though, all these factors might be weighted differently which would tip the balance on a free tier making sense. It depends on too many things e.g. marketing budget, competitors (how entrenched they are, how much they offer for free), how much a user needs to try out your product before they realise they need it, differences between free and paid plan, if your product appeals to teams or individuals, support costs.
This. If you offer something very very simple where the way it is being done is much more important than what it is (e.g. a innovative text editor that solves precisely the same problems as other text editors but in a slightly more convenient fashion) then offering a free tester makes a ton of sense. There is too many text editors out there and getting people to understand why they should even consider paying money for yours is a important part of getting the money in the first place.
When your product however solves a very unique problem and is the only product that does that, you don't really need to do such a thing, because the why is self explainatory. E.g. you wrote a format converter that allows users to transfer basic audio projects between all kind of proprietary DAWs. This is so self explaining that only people who have a pressing need to solve that problem will pay for it anyways. And because there is not too much competition in that market you don't have to demonstrate why your solution is slightly better than $trustedopensourceprogram
I run a freeium Chrome extension (https://www.checkbot.io/) for checking website SEO, speed and security factors where I have the free plan without sign up for multiple reasons 1) low friction so users can try it out first 2) users may be more likely to share and recommend it for quickly checking website issues 3) there's free tools in this space so it may be harder to ask for payment upfront. I'm generally not finding the cost of the free users high.
For another product though, all these factors might be weighted differently which would tip the balance on a free tier making sense. It depends on too many things e.g. marketing budget, competitors (how entrenched they are, how much they offer for free), how much a user needs to try out your product before they realise they need it, differences between free and paid plan, if your product appeals to teams or individuals, support costs.