Five Rooms, Public Included
The free tier now includes five owned rooms, and anyone can create a public room without meeting a paywall first.
We changed what free means in PingRoom.
Free accounts can now own up to five rooms, and those rooms can be private or public. Creating a public room no longer redirects to the Pro screen, and the Public option no longer carries a Pro badge.
This is a product decision, not a promotion.
Why Five Rooms
One room is enough to understand PingRoom, but it is not enough to make the product part of daily life.
A family may need one room for arrivals, one for the front door, and one for something urgent. A small team may separate incidents, deliveries, and deploys. A creator may want a public update room alongside private rooms for collaborators.
Five rooms gives people enough space to build those habits before they have to make a subscription decision. It also makes the free tier easier to explain: create up to five rooms, choose who can find them, and start sending Pings.
Public Is A Room Type, Not A Premium Feature
Public rooms help a signal travel beyond a group that already knows the invite code. They can support announcements, product updates, community alerts, and any room where discovery matters more than a private roster.
Charging before someone can create that room put the paywall in front of the network effect. It also made "public" sound like an advanced configuration when it is really a basic choice about who can join.
Public rooms still keep their own rules. Members follow the room, the owner controls who may Ping, and the product remains push-first rather than turning into a public chat feed. The change is simply that anyone can create one.
A Quieter Pro Screen
The free-tier change gave us a reason to simplify the Pro screen too.
Public rooms were removed from the paid-benefit list. The remaining benefits are visible without a "see more" detour, purchase states use green for success instead of borrowing Signal Red, and the call to action is preceded by one clear trust line: no commitment, cancel anytime.
Pro is still where PingRoom's deeper automation and control live: more rooms, schedules, location triggers, webhooks, integrations, history, insights, and customization. The screen should explain that value directly, not make free features look artificially restricted.
More Room To Feel The Product
The best free tier is not the one with the longest checklist. It is the one that lets the product become useful.
Five rooms and free public creation give PingRoom enough room to prove itself. If someone later chooses Pro, it should be because they want more power, not because the basic shape of the product was withheld.
Mahdi Salmanzade
The Ping that cuts through.
