STARS Step: Retained

Retained is the fourth and most important step in the STARS framework. It shows how many companies from the Adopted step keep using the feature over time. These are the companies that are actively using your feature.

For SaaS products, most key features likely should be used at least once per subscription cycle (typically meaning monthly). However, some features aren’t designed to be used so frequently. 

Defining the right retention period for each feature is critical to measuring the Retained step correctly.

Companies can move backward from Retained if they do not continue using the feature. This is called churn.

It is followed by the Satisfied step.

Related to: STARS Framework