Which product archetypes lean self-serve versus sales-led?
The split flips hard by archetype. Prosumer is the most self-serve at 38.2% PLG with only 7.3% sales-led, while Enterprise inverts to 48.3% sales-led against 20.0% PLG [1]. Collaborative products are the other sales-heavy archetype (39.1% sales-led) [1]. If you know your archetype, you can predict your default motion — consumer and prosumer skew product-led, enterprise and collaborative skew sales-led.
Enterprise apps are 48.3% sales-led vs 5.2% for consumer apps — a 9x swing across archetypes, July 2026.
| Item | PLG % |
|---|---|
| Prosumer | 38.2% |
| Consumer | 29.0% |
| Social | 23.2% |
| Enterprise | 20.0% |
| Collaborative | 17.4% |
| 2-sided Marketplace | 12.9% |
The finding: archetype predicts motion
Across 757 archetype-tagged companies, the self-serve-vs-sales split is almost entirely a function of who you sell to [1]. Prosumer leads on PLG (38.2%) and Enterprise leads on sales (48.3%), a near-perfect inversion. The two 'work product' archetypes — Enterprise and Collaborative — are the only ones where sales-led rivals or beats PLG, because a buyer and a user are different people.
The breakdown
PLG and sales-led share within each archetype (each row's N is companies of that archetype with a growth_engine tag; archetypes are multi-select) [1]:
| Archetype | N | PLG % | Sales-led % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prosumer | 110 | 38.2% | 7.3% |
| Consumer | 427 | 29.0% | 5.2% |
| Social | 237 | 23.2% | 9.3% |
| Enterprise | 60 | 20.0% | 48.3% |
| Collaborative | 46 | 17.4% | 39.1% |
| 2-sided Marketplace | 140 | 12.9% | 6.4% |
Enterprise is the only archetype where sales-led (48.3%) exceeds PLG (20.0%) [1].
How to apply it
Map your product to an archetype first, then default to its dominant motion. Building a prosumer tool? Self-serve is the 38% base rate and sales-led is a rounding error at 7% [1]. Building enterprise or collaborative software? Budget for a sales motion — nearly half of enterprise apps run one, and PLG alone reaches only 1 in 5 [1]. Marketplaces are neither PLG- nor sales-heavy; they grow on paid and liquidity instead (see the marketplace page).
Caveats
Denominator is the 757 companies with a product_archetype tag, and each archetype row counts only those with a growth_engine too [1]. Archetypes are multi-select, so a company can appear under both, say, Prosumer and Collaborative — the rows are not a clean partition. Enterprise (N=60) and Collaborative (N=46) are small cells; treat their percentages as directional.
The numbers
| Stat | Computed from |
|---|---|
| 38.2% of 110 | selfServeVsSalesByArchetype: Prosumer plg_pct 38.2, n 110 |
| 48.3% of 60 | selfServeVsSalesByArchetype: Enterprise sales_pct 48.3, n 60 |
| 20.0% of 60 | selfServeVsSalesByArchetype: Enterprise plg_pct 20.0, n 60 |
| 39.1% of 46 | selfServeVsSalesByArchetype: Collaborative sales_pct 39.1, n 46 |
| 5.2% of 427 | selfServeVsSalesByArchetype: Consumer sales_pct 5.2, n 427 |
Sources & citations
- [1] Lazyweb Research analysis of 757 companies, July 2026. selfServeVsSalesByArchetype: PLG and Sales-led shares within each product_archetype; per-row N = archetype companies with a growth_engine tag. ↩
Source: Lazyweb Research — proprietary analysis of real, in-market app screens. Cite as Lazyweb Research, 2026-07-09.