What rules or frameworks do you follow when setting pricing tiers?
Hey PH folks š
Iām currently building a SaaS (still early, but functional!) and hitting that classic wall: pricing tiers.
Iāve read a bunch of articles, but Iād love to hear from real builders:
How do you decide what features go into each tier?
What helped you find your initial price points?
Did you base it on usage, team size, value deliveredā¦ or gut feel?
Bonus: Do you regret going with monthly pricing before testing annual, or vice versa?
Would love to hear your thoughts or experiences š
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We gave too much in the free plan at the start. Made it hard to get users to upgrade later.
@michael_t_brown Thanks for sharing that, Michael, thatās exactly one of the pitfalls Iām worried about.
But, was the challenge that users just didnāt need to upgrade because the free plan covered too much? Or was it more of a psychological anchor where users got used to thinking the product should be free?
So, how you approached adjusting the plan later and whether it had a big impact on retention or churn.
Someone once gave me a super helpful piece of advice: make sure your pricing is (hopefully) exactly at or even slightly more than proportional to the value you're offering. If you underprice, it can actually hurt trust in your brand. Better to start high and adjust than go too low and anchor perception there.
What are you building?
@dheerajdotexe Thanks, that point about pricing relative to value really stuck with me.
Right now, I'm leaning toward offering a simple tiered model:
A limited free tier to let users play with their own data (with some guardrails),
A full-featured 14-day free trial,
Then paid tiers based mostly on data volume, collaboration features, and AI-powered analysis tools (which cost more to run).
Iām trying to strike the balance between accessibility (especially for solo users or small teams) and sustainability, particularly where infra or AI usage starts to spike.
The product is called Datastripes (https://www.producthunt.com/products/datastripes) it's a visual data exploration tool for non-technical users. Like working with your data with intuitive, drag-and-drop, no SQL needed (at first).
Still pre-launch, so any feedback or thoughts on pricing, UX, or positioning are more than welcome š
I donāt really start by thinking about monthly vs. annual pricing.
I believe that part can come later.
To me, annual plans only make sense if thereās enough user loyalty,
and thatās something we should measure based on actual usage data.
Right now, Iām focusing on identifying the features users truly want.
Iām trying to separate the offerings based on what feels most essential to them.
Thatās how Iām thinking about structuring the pricing tiers.
Totally agree with you... we had also postponed the pricing discussion to focus first on real usage and feature priorities.
But now investors are starting to ask for a clear business model, so weāre being "gently forced" to shape our tiers earlier than expected, or at least find a mental path to follow š
Just curious, what are you building?