Strategy
Grade whether your product can actually carry a self-serve motion.
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- Claude, via MCP
Is my product suited to product-led growth?
Score five factors: time to value in minutes (25 points), onboarding without human help (25), value obvious before talking to sales (20), a price that suits self-serve (15) and built-in virality (15). Strong yes scores full points, partly half. 70+ is a strong fit, 45 to 69 suits a hybrid with sales assist, under 45 favours sales-led.
A pure PLG motion would stall on the weak criteria. A hybrid, self-serve top of funnel, sales-assist for expansion and larger accounts, usually fits products like this best.
Time-to-value and no-touch onboarding are the make-or-break criteria, without them, a free tier generates signups that never activate.
About this calculator
PLG is the growth motion everyone wants because it looks capital-efficient on a pitch deck, but forcing a self-serve motion onto a product that needs a human to explain its value just produces a free tier full of people who never activate. This grader scores the specific prerequisites that determine whether self-serve can actually carry your growth, or whether sales-assist or full sales-led is the better bet.
How to use it
- Rate five criteria as strong yes, partially, or no: whether time-to-value is minutes not weeks, whether a user can onboard with zero human help, whether your price point supports self-serve or low ACV, whether natural virality or collaboration is built in, and whether value is obvious before anyone talks to sales.
- Read the weighted PLG feasibility score out of 100.
- Read the recommended motion, strong PLG fit, a hybrid of self-serve plus sales-assist, or sales-led being the better bet.
Methodology
Time-to-value and self-serve onboarding are each weighted 25 points, since without fast, no-touch activation a free or trial funnel never converts regardless of how good the product is. Obvious value before sales contact is weighted 20, price point and virality 15 each, for 100 points total.
Each criterion scores full weight for "strong yes," half weight for "partially," and zero for "no," and the weighted points sum into the overall feasibility score.
A score of 70 or above signals strong PLG fit, invest in the free/trial funnel and activation. 45-69 suggests a hybrid motion, self-serve for the top of funnel with sales-assist for expansion and larger accounts. Below 45 means the fundamentals for self-serve aren't there yet, and forcing PLG would likely starve a sales motion that would convert better.
Time-to-value and self-serve onboarding are called out as the true make-or-break criteria, without them, a free tier just generates signups that never activate, no amount of virality or attractive pricing fixes that underlying gap.
PLG feasibility score
Score = 25 × Time to value + 25 × Self-serve onboarding + 20 × Obvious value + 15 × Price point + 15 × Virality (each: Strong yes = 1, Partly = 0.5, No = 0) Band: 70+ strong PLG fit, 45 to 69 hybrid, under 45 sales-led
- Time to value
- How fast a new user gets a useful result: minutes, hours or weeks.
- Self-serve onboarding
- Whether a user can set up and start without a call, training or data migration help.
- Obvious value
- Whether users can see the benefit themselves before speaking to anyone.
- Price point
- Whether the starting price is low enough to buy on a card without procurement.
- Virality
- Whether using the product naturally brings in colleagues or customers.
Time to value and self-serve onboarding carry half the score because without them a free plan or trial produces sign-ups that never activate. The bands are the tool's; use them to choose a starting motion, not as a verdict on the product.
Worked example: the default answers
A B2B tool takes an hour or so to show value, can be set up without help, has a high starting price, gets some spread through shared reports and shows its value clearly in a demo account.
- Time to value partly = 25 × 0.5 = 12.5.
- Self-serve onboarding yes = 25.
- Price point no = 0.
- Virality partly = 15 × 0.5 = 7.5.
- Obvious value yes = 20.
- Score = 12.5 + 25 + 0 + 7.5 + 20 = 65, in the hybrid band.
- A lower-priced starter plan (price partly) would add 7.5 points and reach 72.5, a strong fit.
A hybrid motion fits: a free trial or starter plan to bring users in, and sales assistance for teams and larger accounts. Model the free-to-paid funnel with the freemium-to-paid pipeline modeller and track onboarding drop-off with the product tour effectiveness grader.
What makes product-led growth work?
Product-led growth works when the product can sell itself to the first user:
- Fast first value: a user gets a useful result in the first session.
- No setup wall: no data migration, integration or training needed to start.
- A path to paid: clear limits or features that make upgrading natural.
- A reason to invite others: sharing, collaboration or customer-facing output.
Many B2B products end up hybrid: self-serve for small teams, sales for large ones. That is a strong outcome, not a compromise.
Product-led growth in India vs the US
Indian SaaS companies often run self-serve funnels for global markets and sales-led motions for Indian enterprises, because Indian enterprise buyers usually expect a demo and negotiation. For Indian SMB self-serve, rupee pricing, UPI payments and support on WhatsApp make self-serve easier.
US buyers are used to trying products with a card and expanding later, so product-led motions are well established. Larger US accounts still involve procurement and security review, which is why product-qualified leads are handed to sales. The product usage frequency grader helps judge whether users form a habit.
Common PLG mistakes
- Launching a free plan before onboarding works without help.
- Copying a consumer-style funnel for a product that needs data setup.
- Giving away so much on the free plan that nobody upgrades.
- Removing sales entirely when larger accounts still need it.
- Measuring sign-ups instead of activated users.
FAQ
Because they're the load-bearing prerequisites, if a user can't reach value quickly and without help, no other PLG ingredient, pricing, virality, positioning, matters. A free tier with slow time-to-value just produces a graveyard of signups who never came back.
Typically a self-serve free tier or trial handles initial acquisition and small-account conversion, while a sales team engages for larger accounts, custom needs, or expansion deals. Many successful SaaS companies (Slack, Notion in their upmarket motion) run exactly this blend rather than pure PLG or pure sales-led.
It caps it rather than blocking it outright. High ACV usually still needs a sales conversation somewhere in the funnel, but you can still run a PLG-flavored top of funnel (self-serve trial, fast time-to-value) that feeds a sales-assisted close for the deal itself, this is common in the hybrid motion.
Yes, but usually only after deliberately re-engineering the product to shorten time-to-value and remove manual onboarding steps, not just by launching a free tier on top of an unchanged product. Re-run this grader after any material product change to see whether the fundamentals have actually shifted.
Product-led growth is a strategy where the product itself drives acquisition, conversion and expansion, usually through a free plan or trial, with sales involved later or for larger accounts.
Yes, usually by building a simpler entry product or a self-serve onboarding path first, then adding a free plan or trial once activation works without help.
Not entirely. A lower-priced starter plan or a usage-based entry point can bring users in, with the full product sold through sales.
Numbers looking off?
If the model says one thing and the pipeline says another, that gap is usually where the revenue is. A 30-minute call finds it.
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