What you need a monetization specialist also known as a pricing professional. There are people who are 100% specialized in this skillset for a reason. It's hard. If you want to learn to do it yourself, I can recommend some books. Otherwise, you can going to need to speak with me or a peer with the same skillsets. Anyone recommending Freemium as a model likely does not have the ability to help you. Happy to discuss further, without understanding the app, I can't provided direct recommendations.

Yes, thousands of companies. This answers your social proof question.

However, what you really need to know is that due to price quality effect... it is entirely possible that by raising your prices you may actually increase volume!

I recommend doing a volume hurdle analysis before any decision is reached. How much volume can I afford to lose that the price increase will make up for? Then it is just forecasting what will happen to volume via elasticities.

Your question really boils down to one fundamental question: are there different segments?

Undoubtedly the answer is yes. I have never seen a business that doesn't have different segments.
So what you are really asking is have you done your segmentation properly?