Ask HN: How do a SaaS compete when others offer a free plan

I'm running a SaaS and I don't offer free plan. We do have free trial and one click cancel and no question asked refund. I proactly reached out to our customers to asked if they need more time to evaluate.

But it always feel like a losing game where others just offer free plan. I don't even know how they can afford to offer free plans. I feel like I built something and poor hours of work into it, I reached to people manually, listen for feedback and try to implement/fix thing as fast as possible, then I should charge for it.

Then I looked back, cloudflare offers free DNS management, while dnsimple is $6/per month. And dnsimple is doing very well obviously, they have been around for 10 years.

Or fastmail vs gmail, gmail is free and fastmail charge $3 per month.

So, SaaS founders, do you offer free plan for your SaaS and how do you compete with others that has a free plan?