Nobody is saying your app should be entirely free. They're saying it should be opt-in after the free trial, and that you shouldn't be collecting payment information until people are choosing to pay for your product. That's good practice in any domain; it's especially important in the field of mental health care.

Many lawyers offer a short consult before they start charging. When we have work done on our house most contractors will provide an estimate and a brief discussion before charging anything. When we go to a store we can look at things before we decide to buy them.

A free trial for an app is along these lines; it's not saying your product is free, it's saying people can check it out enough to make an informed decision about whether they want to pay for it.

I also ended up dropping out at the same part of the signup. I don't have a problem paying for things, but I don't feel comfortable with a user experience that doesn't say up front how much it costs. It wasn't until I filled out all the details that it became apparent there are paid plans. That for me is a warning sign about what the company could do in the future.

This comes off as so incredibly tone-deaf to me that I now understand how you came up with this terrible execution and still think you were justified in the way you launched. This is your crowd. We are the target audience. We are your potential users. Listen. Apologise. Take notes. Get back to the drawing board.

yea but opt out auto annual renewal of 100$ is shady. Gtfo. You should let people actually trial the app or don't offer a trial. Also monthly subscriptions. If neither of those work then what value is our app actually offering?

Have you considered that this is maybe the universe's way of telling you that monetizing a zero-margin healthcare treatment is a bad idea?