Azure is Microsoft's enterprise cloud platform and offers limited monthly usage of select services at no cost. There are two types of free services, those that are free for 12 months after account creation, and others that are free every month with an active account.
I led end-to-end design across discovery, service creation, and monitoring flows to improve awareness around free usage limits and protect users against unexpected charges.
Lead Designer
Jun — Dec 2024
UXR, Product, Engineering
Free usage drove a significant share of surprise charges, raising support costs and hurting trust and long-term adoption. This contributed to Azure’s free-to-paid conversion shortfall.
I partnered with our research team and conducted interviews with 8 customers who had started free services and later incurred unexpected charges. Two key insights emerged:
01 — Free usage guidance wasn't surfaced prominently or consistently enough, making it easy for users to overlook.
I thought that since I was using a free tier service, I wouldn’t be charged. There should be more clarity around overages at discovery and service creation.
— Participant 4, Cloud Engineer
02 — Users expected Azure to catch potential charges, before they occurred.
I had the expectation that Azure would pause my free service usage or, at the very least, send me a notification before I exceeded the free amount.
— Participant 6, Web Developer
What became clear early on in the design process was that solving this problem would require rethinking every stage of the Free Tier experience:
Free Tier Learning and Discovery
Free Service Deployment
Monitoring and Management
The Free Tier page is the home of free service discovery. Before, usage limits messaging was easy to miss. I added two cards explaining the 12-month and always-free offers, but testing showed this confused users into thinking they had to choose one or the other. The final design uses a single card to clarify both offers can be used together and reframes “monthly amounts” as “services with monthly usage limits”, which users found better conveyed limitations.
The Create Flow is where users deploy services. There was no free usage limit warning prior. I added a banner on overage charges and surfaced monthly limits in the pricing dropdown. Testing found the banner out of place appearing before pricing selection, so in the final design it only shows after selecting Free Tier. I also added an opt-in checkbox for usage notifications.
Originally, free usage monitoring on the Billing page was hard to scan and see which services were nearing/had reached their limit. The redesigned card shows total services in-use, adds a new “Nearing limit” status to prompt action, and includes progress bars for top-used services.
Clicking “View All” under Free usage opens a details view. I first included statuses to indicate whether services were within, nearing, or reached their limit, and added “Manage” links. After testing, I also included overage charge details for limit-exceeded services in the final design.
An explanation card is added to the top of the Free Tier page to clarify free usage limits, overage charges, and offer durations.
The Create Flow displays free limits in the pricing dropdown. When the Free Tier is selected, a banner outlines overage charges. A checkbox allows users to opt-into free usage notifications.
Free usage monitoring includes progress bars and statuses indicating when services are nearing or have reached their limit. The details view highlights overage charges, usage statuses, and includes “Manage” links.
By clarifying usage limits, including opt-in usage reminders, and strengthening monitoring, support related to surprise charges greatly reduced and free-to-paid conversion increased.
40% decrease
in free usage related unexpected charges
5% increase
in conversion from free to paid usage
75% opt-in rate
for free usage notifications
01 — Significance of end-to-end design
This was the most end-to-end project I’ve worked on, reinforcing the importance of designing across the full user journey. It wasn’t just about fixing one single surface, but about addressing the problem comprehensively through coordinated updates across multiple touch points.
02 — Check assumptions with users
It was also my first time conducting user interviews and testing, which showed me how valuable it is to hear directly from users. What feels intuitive as a designer doesn’t always translate to users, and testing highlighted where additional refinement or clarity was needed.
