Understand what you are giving up, because it is more than reach. Content behind a form cannot be found in search, cannot be linked to by other sites, cannot be cited by AI systems answering questions, and cannot be shared usefully. For a first year business whose main problem is being discovered at all, those are exactly the mechanisms you need working.
The arithmetic rarely favours gating at small scale. A page open to everybody might be read by two hundred people, several of whom become customers over time and some of whom link to it. The gated version might collect thirty addresses, most of which are people who wanted the file rather than the service. Thirty low quality addresses is worse than two hundred readers and a page that keeps working.
Where gating does earn its place is a genuine tool rather than an article. A calculator that produces a number specific to somebody's situation, a template that saves an afternoon, or a checklist for a decision being made this week. Those are worth an email address because the recipient is getting something they would otherwise have to build, and the people who want them are usually people with the problem.
The distinction is whether the thing is used or read. Completion rates on downloaded documents are poor, and a document nobody opened builds no relationship. Something somebody applies creates a considerably stronger impression, and using something you made is a better introduction than reading something you wrote.
If you gate, ask for the minimum. An email address is enough. Every additional field reduces completion measurably, and the information you were going to collect is available later in conversation once somebody is engaged. A form requesting name, company, phone, and role is a form abandoned by people who would have converted.
Consider the middle position, which most businesses overlook. Publish the material openly and offer something adjacent behind the form: the template that accompanies the article, a worked example, or a version formatted to print. That captures the search value and the contact details without the trade.
Never gate anything a customer needs, which is a mistake businesses make with support material. Documentation, instructions, and answers to common questions should be open, because putting them behind a form means somebody with a problem now has two problems, and one of them is you.
Then check whether the addresses collected actually produce anything, which requires tagging them by source. Many businesses discover the gated list converts at a fraction of the rate of people who enquired directly, and that finding usually means the gate is collecting curiosity rather than intent.
Consider the tone of the exchange as well as the arithmetic. A form standing between somebody and an answer, from a business they do not yet know, reads as a transaction at the moment you were trying to establish goodwill. Giving something away without conditions is a stronger opening position for a business nobody has heard of.
If you do gate, deliver it immediately and without a sequence attached, at least on the first message. Somebody who receives what they asked for promptly and without a pitch is considerably more receptive to whatever follows than somebody who receives an offer before the file.
Review anything currently gated against how much it actually produces, because businesses rarely revisit this and the honest answer is frequently that opening it would be worth more than the addresses collected.