The deal we made with ourselves: why FlashSeat will never run ads
Six months before launch, a member of our testing group asked if FlashSeat would have ads. The question caught me off guard, not because it was unexpected, but because I realised I had no clear answer. That conversation changed our entire business model.
The ad-supported trap we decided to skip
Here's what we were thinking in those early days: free tier with ads, Premium to remove them, Pro for serious buyers. It felt clean. Standard. Low friction to get users in the door.
Then I spent a week using flight and event booking apps the way our users would. Refreshing deals on my lunch break. Checking for last-minute concert tickets. Hunting for cheap flights to Berlin.
Every app showed ads. Not just banner ads. Sponsored deals mixed in with real deals. Promoted listings in search results. A video ad before I could access my saved searches. The noise was exhausting. And worse, it created a conflict I couldn't ignore: an app making money from ads has an incentive to keep you scrolling, clicking, second-guessing. It doesn't have an incentive to get you to book quickly at the best price. It has an incentive to show you more stuff, whether it helps you or not.
Our users are deal hunters. They're checking FlashSeat between meetings, on their commute, at their desk when they should be working. They need speed and clarity. They don't need sponsored rubbish cluttering the deals that matter.
Charging money does something that free never will
The shift to Premium and Pro changed how we think about every feature we ship.
When your only revenue is advertising, every user is an asset to sell to advertisers. When your revenue comes from the people using your app, every user is a person you've made a promise to. That sounds like marketing fluff, but it's not. It's a completely different incentive structure.
Take our deal alerts. When we built them, we weren't thinking about "how do we get users to check the app more often?" We were thinking about "how do we make sure Premium members actually get notified when a deal matching their search appears?" The reliability matters because they paid for it. The accuracy matters because they paid for it. We're not trying to engineer engagement; we're trying to solve the actual problem they bought the app to solve.
Same with the QR ticket in the app at maximum brightness, offline. Same with three-step checkout. Same with members-only deals that genuinely are exclusive, not just repackaged inventory.
Paid users hold you accountable in a way free users can't. We like that pressure.
What "free" really meant in our world
We kept the free tier. Anyone can see FlashSeat deals. Anyone can book a flight or concert ticket at the standard 8 - 10% buyer fee. No account required to browse. No paywall before discovery.
But we were honest about it: if you're not paying, we're not subsidising you. You get the product. You get deals. You pay the standard fee on your booking. That's the trade. No ads, no surveillance, no engagement maximisation. Just deals and a fee.
It felt important to be explicit about that rather than pretend free users aren't paying anything. They are. They're paying through a slightly higher booking fee instead of data and attention.
The Premium tier at £7.99 a month or £59.99 annually cuts that to 4 - 5%, adds members-only deals and early access to drops. The maths work: a Premium member booking just two flights a year at £50 each saves money on fees alone, before you count the exclusive deals. Pro, at £14.99 a month or £119.99 annually, is for the serious deal hunters and event fans. Zero buyer fees. The ones checking FlashSeat constantly.
The users who made this decision for us
During our launch week, I got a message from a user called Maya. She said: "I don't want to see ads. I'll pay for this instead." She wasn't alone. Of our first 500 testers, about 40% converted to Premium within the first month, before we'd even finished the Pro tier. They didn't need convincing. They knew what they wanted.
We've had roughly the same conversion since. The free tier isn't a funnel. It's a genuine option for people who want to book occasionally at the standard rate. The Premium tier is for people who book regularly. Pro is for obsessives.
That split feels honest. And it meant we could keep the app clean, quick, and focused on what we actually do: finding you time-limited deals on flights and events before anyone else and getting you through checkout in three steps.
What saying no to ads actually meant
Rejecting an ad-supported model meant we couldn't grow quite as fast. We'd never have the viral velocity of an ad-supported app because we weren't optimising for engagement metrics. We'd never have funding from ad networks. We'd have to be disciplined about who we build for and why.
Weirdly, that's been liberating. We're building for 18 - 40 year olds in the UK who actually want to book flights and events. Not for an advertiser trying to reach 18 - 40 year olds. Not for algorithms trying to maximise watch time. For people with money in their pocket and a concert or trip in mind.
That constraint has made every product decision simpler. Does this feature make deals easier to spot and book? Does it reward people who pay us? Does it work offline when someone needs their ticket QR code at the venue? Yes, no, no? We don't build it.
An ad-supported app can't afford to be that focused. The pressure to grow and engage eats everything.
We could have launched with ads, trimmed them back, promised to remove them in Premium, and probably grown faster in the first six months. Instead we chose to be smaller and cleaner from day one. I genuinely don't know if we made the right call yet. But I know which version of FlashSeat I'd rather use, and I suspect you would too.
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