> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.highailabs.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Phased Rollout Plan

> The path from staging to revenue: Phase 0 proves purchases end-to-end, Phase 1 launches Guest / Free / Pro with a 7-day trial, Phase 2 runs optimization experiments, Phase 3 ships Studio at v4.0.

<Note>
  **Status:** Decided — July 3, 2026
  **Pre-launch context:** No live users yet. App is on staging. $0 revenue. Purchases have not been proven end-to-end.   **Model of record:** [Pricing Strategy](/planning/pricing/strategy). Tiers and prices here follow that page exactly: Guest / Free / **Pro $12.99/mo, \$99.99/yr, 7-day trial\*\*; Studio deferred to v4.0.
</Note>

## The shape of the rollout

| Phase                             | When                              | Status      | What happens                                                                                     |
| --------------------------------- | --------------------------------- | ----------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Phase 0 — Prove purchases E2E** | Now                               | **BLOCKED** | RevenueCat dashboard config, sandbox purchase/restore/webhook verification, TestFlight paid beta |
| **Phase 1 — App Store launch**    | After Phase 0 unblocks            | Planned     | Guest / Free / Pro with 7-day trial                                                              |
| **Phase 2 — Optimization**        | \~90 days post-launch, data-gated | Planned     | Paywall A/B, the no-trial (Option B) test, annual push, win-back/dunning                         |
| **Phase 3 — Studio v4.0**         | 12+ months post-launch            | Planned     | AI media ships into a new Studio tier at \$19.99/mo                                              |

<Warning>
  **What this plan explicitly drops from earlier drafts:** the Day-1 Studio tier, "no free trials, ever," $9.99 Pro pricing, Historical Import as one-time SKUs, and the 600-unit / $149K Founders program. Those live on only as rejected alternatives in [Pricing Strategy](/planning/pricing/strategy). The smaller 50-unit Founders lifetime experiment is likewise **cancelled** — no lifetime products of any kind (founder decision, July 3, 2026). Also corrected: Apple refunds are **discretionary, case-by-case decisions by Apple** — there is no guaranteed "14-day refund window," so refunds can never be our only risk-reversal story. The 7-day trial is the risk-reversal mechanism.
</Warning>

***

## Phase 0 — Prove the purchase machine (current, BLOCKED)

Nothing else in this document matters until a stranger can pay us and we can see it happen. Phase 0 is engineering + configuration work, currently **blocked** — track and clear these before any launch date talk:

<Steps>
  <Step title="RevenueCat dashboard configuration">
    Products, entitlement (`pro`), offering, and 7-day introductory trial configured in RevenueCat + App Store Connect, matching the SKU block at the bottom of this page. Verify the trial constant in code matches the store-configured intro offer.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Sandbox purchase, restore, and webhook verification">
    Full loop in the App Store sandbox: purchase (monthly + annual), trial start → conversion, restore purchases on a fresh install, cancellation, and RevenueCat webhooks landing and updating entitlement state server-side. Include the billing-grace path: **a 16-day billing grace period already exists in code — exercise it in sandbox.**
  </Step>

  <Step title="TestFlight paid beta">
    A small external TestFlight cohort runs the real paywall (sandbox billing) end-to-end: onboarding → Free account → trial start → first AI Notebook inside the trial week → conversion or lapse. This is also the first real read on the trial experience.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Apple Small Business Program enrollment">
    Enroll immediately so Apple's cut is 15% instead of 30% from day one. Until confirmation, all models use 30% Year-1 economics (see [Pricing Strategy](/planning/pricing/strategy)).
  </Step>
</Steps>

**Exit criteria:** every step above green, plus refund/cancellation states rendering correctly in-app.

***

## Phase 1 — App Store launch

**Guest + Free + Pro. One paid tier, one entitlement, a 7-day trial.**

### Pricing

| Product         | Price          | Notes                                                                      |
| --------------- | -------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Guest           | \$0            | No login: browse 2,500+ researched strains, families, music, label scanner |
| Free            | \$0            | Account: stash, favorites, manual order upload, collection basics          |
| **Pro Monthly** | **\$12.99/mo** | **7-day free trial**                                                       |
| **Pro Annual**  | **\$99.99/yr** | \$8.33/mo effective, 36% off; same 7-day trial                             |

Historical Import is **included in Pro with usage caps** (daily order-processing rate cap + per-account AI-generation ceiling). No import SKUs at launch.

<Info>
  **Why a trial:** High IQ is an unknown brand asking \$12.99/mo. The trial lets the first AI Notebook sell the subscription, and it is the honest risk-reversal offer — unlike Apple refunds, which are discretionary and cannot be promised. Feature previews on Guest/Free (strain encyclopedia, label scanner, music) remain the pre-trial taste of the product.
</Info>

### What Phase 1 ships

The full launch feature-by-tier matrix lives in [Tier Comparison](/planning/pricing/tier-comparison) — canonical, not duplicated here. In one line: **Guest browses, Free tracks (stash / favorites / manual orders / share cards), Pro thinks (Notebooks, Stats, Gmail sync, receipt parsing, Suggest Strain, capped Historical Import).**

### What Phase 1 specifically does NOT have

* No Studio tier and no AI media (v4.0 — Phase 3)
* No Basic tier, no à-la-carte add-ons, no family or B2B plans
* No Historical Import SKUs (included in Pro, capped)
* No lifetime products, period — founder decision (July 3, 2026); early-adopter marketing uses non-pricing perks (founder badge, early access, direct line to the founder)

### Launch metrics to watch

Targets and thresholds are defined in [Revenue Projections — dashboard](/planning/pricing/revenue-projections): install→trial (≥10%), trial→paid (≥40%), net install→paid (3–5%), cohort churn (≤7%), annual mix (25–35%), refund leak (2–5%), AI cost/user (≤\$2.50/mo).

***

## Phase 2 — Optimization experiments (\~90 days post-launch)

Once real cohort data exists, run experiments in priority order. Each is a test, not a decree.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Paywall A/B testing">
    Placement (onboarding vs feature-gate), copy, price framing, and trial presentation. RevenueCat Experiments handles the split. Highest-leverage lever per the sensitivity analysis in [Revenue Projections](/planning/pricing/revenue-projections).
  </Step>

  <Step title="The no-trial test (rejected Option B, revisited with data)">
    **Trigger:** trial→paid below \~30% for two consecutive cohorts, or material trial abuse. Test the rejected "Guest + Pro only, no trial" model against the control. This is the sanctioned way Option B re-enters — as an experiment, not a relaunch. See [Pricing Strategy — rejected alternatives](/planning/pricing/strategy).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Annual push">
    Default the paywall to annual, test discount framing ("\$8.33/mo billed yearly"), and post-conversion monthly→annual upgrade prompts. Target: 25–35% annual mix.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Win-back and dunning">
    **Current state: a 16-day billing grace period exists in code, but there is no dunning flow yet.** Build: payment-failure messaging during grace, lapsed-subscriber win-back offers (RevenueCat win-back offers on iOS), and a cancel-flow save offer. Irrelevant at 40 subscribers, compounding at 1,000 — build it during Phase 2, not after churn hurts.
  </Step>
</Steps>

Also in Phase 2, decided by data rather than scheduled: whether the churn feedback justifies a cheap Basic tier (rejected at launch), and whether Historical Import caps need tuning or a deep-archive add-on experiment.

***

## Phase 3 — Studio (v4.0, 12+ months post-launch)

**Trigger:** AI media features (podcasts, video reports, strain art, session music) are production-ready **and** the Pro funnel is proven (Stage 2 of [Revenue Projections](/planning/pricing/revenue-projections) reached or in sight).

| Product        | Price         | Notes                                                                                                   |
| -------------- | ------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Studio Monthly | \$19.99/mo    | Everything in Pro + AI media + perks (vanity referral, priority generation, Studio badge, early access) |
| Studio Annual  | \~\$149.99/yr | Final price set with real AI-media cost benchmarks                                                      |

Decisions deliberately deferred to Phase 3 planning, with real data:

* **Tier vs add-ons vs hybrid** for AI media (the analysis preserved in earlier drafts of [Pricing Strategy](/planning/pricing/strategy) gets re-run with actual generation costs)
* Studio trial policy, upgrade-hook design (15-second previews, blurred/watermarked media below reports — that design survives from the brainstorms)
* Whether the [AI Copilot](/planning/pricing/ai-copilot) concept anchors Studio — noting its economics only work usage-capped or at a ≥\$24.99 price point
* Pro→Studio upgrade targets (the old flat "15% upgrade" assumption is retired; set targets from observed engagement with previews)

<Note>
  **Why Studio is not at launch:** selling a \$19.99 tier on the promise of future AI media, before a single proven Pro conversion, invites refund requests and review damage and splits an unproven paywall. Studio ships when its features ship.
</Note>

***

## TL;DR — what to build in RevenueCat (canonical SKU plan)

**Phase 1 launch SKUs (2 subscription products, 1 entitlement — no one-time products; lifetime SKUs are cancelled, founder decision July 3, 2026):**

```
Subscription products:
  pro_monthly  — $12.99/mo, 7-day free trial (introductory offer)
  pro_annual   — $99.99/yr, 7-day free trial

Entitlements:
  pro — unlocks all Pro features, including capped Historical Import
        (matches the entitlement identifier already shipped in code)

Offerings:
  default — Free vs Pro, monthly/annual toggle, trial-forward CTA
```

**Phase 2 (no new SKUs):** RevenueCat Experiments for paywall A/B and the no-trial test; win-back offers configured in App Store Connect; dunning flow built app-side on the existing 16-day grace period.

**Phase 3 SKUs (Studio, v4.0):**

```
Add subscription products:
  studio_monthly — $19.99/mo (final price re-validated pre-launch)
  studio_annual  — ~$149.99/yr

Add entitlement:
  studio — everything in pro + AI media + perks
```

***

## Related

* [Pricing Strategy](/planning/pricing/strategy) — Model of record, unit economics, rejected alternatives
* [Tier Comparison](/planning/pricing/tier-comparison) — Canonical feature-by-tier matrix
* [Revenue Projections](/planning/pricing/revenue-projections) — Milestone-based projections and metric thresholds
* [Personas & Journey](/planning/pricing/personas-journey) — Who converts at each phase
* [What's in Pro](/help/plans/whats-in-pro) — Customer-facing version of the current model