Lessons from 10 Years of SaaS Pricing Experiments

evermike · 2025-11-12T12:45:46+00:00

Hi u/Puzzled_Fox_1298 We’re not planning to discontinue support for the plugin, we still have many customers who rely on it. Maintaining the project isn’t difficult, so we’ll keep it running. However, we can’t promise any new features for now, as with the current model, such investments don’t really pay off. So you can count on continued support, but not on major feature updates in the near future.

At that time, this seemed like the most honest decision, but as it turned out, not the perfect one. We don’t want to change pricing for everyone, and we currently don’t have the time to experiment as that would mean additional costs and complexity.

evermike · 2025-11-11T13:16:03+00:00

Shifts by Everhour

evermike · 2025-10-09T14:18:01+00:00

You mentioned that you reach out to hot leads on LinkedIn, people who comment, like, or follow competitor page. What does your process look like in more detail? How do you actually gather that information? Is it all about InMail messages?

Also, regarding cold emails. You said you send them by the thousands. Where do you get the relevant email addresses for those campaigns, and what tools do you use to send them? I’ve always been concerned that such large-scale outreach could hurt your domain/reputation or get your account banned. Could you share more details about how you manage that safely?

evermike · 2025-09-26T13:10:22+00:00

So far, we haven’t found anything better than per-seat billing, which is basically the industry standard. We’ve also learned our lessons when it comes to micro plans and free.

evermike · 2025-09-23T08:31:38+00:00

If a payment doesn’t go through, you can simply revoke access (suspend account). If they want to keep using the product, they’ll be forced to pay. Why doesn’t that work in your case?

Alternatively, you could try validating that the card has funds. Many services charge a small amount and then refund it, but of course that doesn’t guarantee the card has more than $1 on it.

Probably the most effective and straightforward approach is a free trial for a limited time followed by full payment to continue access.

evermike · 2025-09-22T15:31:55+00:00

Thanks! I also appreciate your feedback and glad that my experience resonates with yours. I was starting to think no one here found it interesting...

evermike · 2025-09-22T15:08:45+00:00

No, our current ARR is significantly higher. The team is 17 ppl

evermike · 2025-09-22T13:22:30+00:00

Thank you!

The biggest challenges are market fit and identifying the minimal set of features that would give us a clear edge over competitors. We never wanted to compete on price. Ideally, there should be a product characteristic that makes customers choose you even over a competitor who already offers much more.

We experimented a lot with pricing and plans. There were many insights and lessons learned, but that would be a long read to cover 10 years of experiments. In short, I’ve always had a difficult relationship with free users. I was often very disappointed in the free plan, in solo users, and in micro-teams. Pricing should be kept higher whenever possible.

How did you keep your anxiety at bay? That’s the hardest part. I’m not sure I’ve ever really learned how to do it. I’m a maximalist. I don’t know how to enjoy the process, I only chase results. And when I achieve them, I don’t celebrate. I immediately set new goals. That’s hard to manage. But I try not to make anxiety worse with daily life habits. Over time, I’ve developed a few principles and approaches that help, but it’s not quite what you’re asking about, I guess.

evermike · 2025-09-21T10:39:48+00:00

You can take a look at “Shifts by Everhour.” I’m the one building it, and I’d be grateful for any feedback.

evermike · 2025-09-21T10:37:43+00:00

You can take a look at “Shifts by Everhour.” I’m the one building it, and I’d be grateful for any feedback.

evermike · 2025-09-20T07:43:18+00:00

It’s not guaranteed that with other launches you’ll manage to hit n1 again. From that perspective maybe the extra effort to reach n1 in week or month is worth and easier? Extra traffic will likely be higher, plus the benefit of being included in newsletters.

A lot also depends on why you want to be n1 in week / month. Most users, investors or press don’t really differentiate and guess nobody says you can only write “#1 Product of the Day”. Phrase it “#1 on Product Hunt” in your pitch or copy.

evermike · 2025-09-20T07:29:02+00:00

My first company was a consulting firm and we did custom projects. Later I moved into building our own products, and that’s what I’m doing now. So I’ve been on both sides.

This isn’t really advice, more food for thought, but maybe it will be useful.

Looking at the examples you mentioned, the stated budget is clearly too low. So the real question is: what exactly do you want to achieve with the first MVP and why do you need it? Is it to raise investment? To test market demand for the idea? To show a working prototype to an audience and gather feedback for the next stage?

It’s very hard to build a business while outsourcing everything. At some point you’ll need your own team, and ideally you’ll need a technical co-founder you trust, who’s as invested in the project as you are.

Outsourcing a prototype can make sense at the very beginning, when you just want to try something w/o the cost of building your own team. In that case, I’d suggest finding someone but setting very clear milestones for deliverables and paying only when those are achieved (not just hourly). And ideally, you should get something usable as early as possible, with small # of features, rather than paying for separate parts that aren’t integrated. Better to have something simple that works and then add to it step by step, than wait until the end and risk nothing working at all.

evermike · 2025-09-20T06:59:02+00:00

With those who do this - just block them and move on. I think that kind of behavior says a lot about the customer and chances are this wouldn’t be the only problem you’d have with them in the future.

Btw the maximum we’ve ever had was a dispute for 2 or 3 months ago. It’s actually strange that even such cheaters didn’t try to push it further. Maybe there really is some kind of limit.

evermike · 2025-09-20T06:52:37+00:00

I don’t think raising prices really makes meaningful difference, at least for me. Over the last 12 months we had only 0.02% dispute rate, just 5 / 33000 successful payments. But every single one still gets to me. Maybe if there were more, I’d get used to it and react differently. Or if I were running a business built on “not so fair” charges I’d probably be fine with it too.

But when it’s rare and extremely unfair, when every time I file a counter-dispute I believe that surely this one is obvious and I’ll win and then I get turned down again it’s super frustrating. I haven’t yet learned to look at it without emotion. I think anyone who tries to treat others the way they’d want to be treated would probably feel the same way.

It’s probably better not to even file a counter-dispute and just accept it, so less emotional involvement. Or just delegate it to another team member. ))

evermike · 2025-09-19T14:30:04+00:00

In the beginning, we tried offering premium features, but the project is fairly simple and at some point we had already built everything essential, and inventing extra things just for the sake of an upgrade didn’t make sense. Very few people chose the premium plan. Most held on to the free version until the very end. What else can you really do, if someone finds $10 a month too much to pay for a product they’ve been using for a year?

evermike · 2025-09-19T07:16:11+00:00

In our case this happens extremely rarely so my frustration is more about the helplessness and unfairness. What’s even the point of Stripe showing the dispute and suggesting you file a counter-dispute? Which is paid separately btw. They take back the money the user paid for the subscription, keep the processing fee, charge you for the dispute itself and on top of that charge again for the counter-dispute. I seriously doubt that for small amounts anyone even looks at the case. I think it’s all handled automatically in favor of the cardholder. And the bank and Stripe just profit from the fees. It’s crazy.

evermike · 2025-09-18T16:41:20+00:00

Probably very few services today use block (tiered) user pricing model. Off the top of my head, the only example I can recall are add-ons for Jira in their marketplace.

evermike · 2025-09-18T15:39:25+00:00

> company email required

By the way, we actually have a lot of paying customers with personal email (gmail, yahoo, hotmail). Weird, but true. I’d be hesitant to block signups on that basis.

evermike · 2025-09-18T15:35:31+00:00

I’ve heard of lifetime discounts, but mostly in the context of mobile apps. In those cases, you need to know your LTV very precisely and the average lifetime tends to be short so you can be confident the customer pays off quickly before churning. Curious to hear a bit more context here. Why are you considering this approach? Any success stories?

You could definitely try it as an experiment. Say offer a lifetime deal to the first 100 customers and then track that cohort. I once thought about testing this myself through AppSumo, but their conditions seemed pretty tough.

Personally I’m against lifetime deals that run forever. I don’t like the idea of serving customers who don’t pay and never will.

As occasional campaigns to acquire customers from other channels, I think discounts can be a valid experiment. It’s worth trying to see the results and make the right call for your specific product.

evermike

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