You can achieve something like this with a pricing strategy.

As DHH and Jason Fried discuss in both the books REWORK, It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, and their blog:

> The worst customer is the one you can’t afford to lose. The big whale that can crush your spirit and fray your nerves with just a hint of their dissatisfaction.

(It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work)

> First, since no one customer could pay us an outsized amount, no one customer’s demands for features or fixes or exceptions would automatically rise to the top. This left us free to make software for ourselves and on behalf of a broad base of customers, not at the behest of any single one. It’s a lot easier to do the right thing for the many when you don’t fear displeasing a few super customers could spell trouble.

(https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/why-we-never-sold-basecamp-by-...)

But, this mechanism proposed by DHH and Fried only remove differences amongst the paying-customers. I Not between "paying" and "non-paying".

I'd think, however, there's some good ideas in there to manage that difference as well. For example to let all the customers, paying- or not-paying go through the exact same flow for support, features, bugs, etc. So not making these the distinctive "drivers" why people would pay. E.g. "you must be paying customer to get support". Obviously depends on the service, but maybe if you have other distinctive features that people would pay for (e.g. hosted version) that could work out.

I think this is a good point and a true point.

However, I understood GP's mention of "embarrassment" to speak more to their own feelings of responsibility. Which would be more or less decoupled from the pressure that a particular client exerts.