Price Intelligently Blog
priceintelligently.com · Company blog · on HN since 2011
ProfitWell's Price Intelligently team publishes data-driven SaaS pricing analysis, page teardowns, and a long pricing strategy guide.
What HN saysCommenters point to its in-depth, data-based pricing guide, and note that the content supports the company's pricing consulting business.
39HN people shared it
21linked it in comments
39stories submitted
199story points
3 years agolast shared
2011people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Homepage6 people · first shared 2011
- 2The Anatomy of SaaS Pricing Strategy (2017) [pdf]3 people · 101 points · first shared 2018 · 5 comments on HN
- 3Netflix pricing page teardown (4.5k+ data points)3 people · 7 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 4The Saddest SaaS Pricing Pages of the Year2 people · 6 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 5Tearing Down the Pricing of Dropbox and Box2 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 6Everyone in SaaS Is Using Buyer Personas Incorrectly2 people · 1 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 7Blog2 people · first shared 2014
- 8Move to tiers1 people · 8 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 9Saddest SaaS Pricing Pages of the Year1 people · 7 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 10Tearing Down the Pricing of Headspace and Calm1 people · 6 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 11Using integrations to reduce SaaS churn1 people · 5 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 12Why Tinder’s charging older users more, and why it makes perfect sense1 people · 5 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 13Product Design and SaaS Value: Distinguishing on Design1 people · 5 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 14Why Tinder's Pricing Strategy Makes Sense1 people · 4 points · first shared 2015 · 4 comments on HN
- 15Tearing Down the Pricing of AMC and MoviePass1 people · 4 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
grow91 · 2017-02-20
They have a pricing consulting business that finances it (http://www.priceintelligently.com/) so the data feeds their consulting business (I'd imagine). I use Profitwell and love it.
rcavezza · 2011-02-09
Thanks for the feedback.
1.) I used http://www.priceintelligently.com for the survey, it's pretty neat.
2.) Perhaps, we're testing many different options.
3.) Also, I'd check out unsubscribe.com.
4.) Non developers are much more likely to give access. It's been tough trying to stay away from my own "developer's bias".
Aulig · 2022-11-08
If you're looking for another in-depth (139 pages), data-driven pricing guide, I can recommend ProfitWells Price Intelligently guide: https://www.priceintelligently.com/hubfs/Price-Intelligently-SaaS-Pric…
arjunvpaul · 2020-08-21
Yes. not necessarily. Once you are able to observe active users, have paying users or even sizeable traffic to test conversions.
You can experiment to find out what that "right" or "best converting" price point would be.
"Free to start" may very well end up being the answer. Here are 2 examples one from pubilshing and one about starting with a price and using data to uncover insights about the "right" price. You will see the 30 cents is not the biggest problem you are going to have in pricing. :-)
- https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/new-york-times-pricing-page-te…
- https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/netflix-pricing-strategy
lotsofpulp · 2019-06-25
I think expecting a seller to make sure they have the lowest price compared to other sellers is ridiculous.
It’s not a seller’s job to make sure the buyer is getting the lowest price. It’s not possible for a seller to know every single other seller’s price so I don’t see how anyone has a reasonable expectation to that in the first place.
People like to THINK they are getting a discount. They don’t care that the actually are. Clear evidence is JCPenney trying to offer people the best price without discounts:
https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/bid/152018/lessons-from-the-fa…
It’s how Kohl’s and Bed Bath And Beyond survive. Consumers rewarded sellers that offer 80% off ridiculously marked up items versus JC Penney who tried to offer an “honest” market price, and they forced JC Penney to engage in “deceptive” sale pricing again.
fnbr · 2017-03-10
I agree with this.
We've been looking at pricing services suggested in this thread, and we've been self-selecting away from the extremely expensive services (e.g. Price Intelligently [1]), as that indicates that the service is targeted towards large enterprises, and not small SaaS companies.
Conversely, if the services were priced lower, that would probably scare off large enterprises.
[1]: http://www.priceintelligently.com/
readme · 2012-10-04
"Download your free e-book now" red button is a dead link/typo.
Here is the corrected link for anyone who wanted to download the ebook. http://www.priceintelligently.com/?hsCtaTracking=920c607f-4f4b-4f03-ad…
That link does break their click tracking though. So if possible, click the red button, and fix the typo yourself after by placing an 'e' between the c and i in price intelligently. Then I presume they will still get their valuable data.
buss_jan · 2016-06-24
Please excuse, if my comments come off as presumptuous or overbearing, you certainly know your business and customers better than I do, I’ll just rattle off what my set of fresh eyes observed and what I think you might want to look into.
In general, what stands out to me is that you do not have a clear USP and you do not seem to speak your target markets language, it might be that since you are addressing markets in many different verticals that you have no clear persona in mind to convince with your copy, no specific set of pain points or benefits to address directly.
In any case, I would try to interview my current customers, ask them to describe in their own words how your software is helping them, what pain they were experiencing before and how they previously dealt with it.
Then you can go about ‘cloning’ them by marketing to specific verticals, have landing pages for hospitals and retailers, agencies and address problems specific to these industries using the information and sound bites you mined from your customer research.
This will also allow you to do some long-tail SEO, produce relevant white papers, tailor your testimonials and in general tighten your copy since you now know who you are talking to.
Take a look for instance at your benefits, they are not benefits, at best they are product features: “Reminders & Communication”, and some are not even that: “No Install Or Setup”.
How about “Never fail audit xyz again with our bullet employee foozle tracking…
pccampbell · 2014-01-05
Hey Marktangotango,
Patrick from Price Intelligently here. We think about this stuff all...the...time.
Overall, it's fairly dependent on the product you're selling, but considering what you mentioned check out these links:
1. The Saddest SaaS Pricing Pages of the year: Goes through a lot of general information on setting up your SaaS pricing, particularly on throttling your value metric appropriately: http://blog.priceintelligently.com/blog/bid/192297/The-Saddest-SaaS-Pr…
2. A Study of the Top 270 SaaS Pricing Pages: Go into a breakdown of pricing pages as well as a bit of a how to: http://go.priceintelligently.com/saas-pricing-blueprint
3. Developing Your Pricing Strategy: Ebook on developing your pricing strategy in general: http://www.priceintelligently.com/
To answer your questions though, it's a tradeoff on simplicity versus spurring upgrades. Companies like Wistia.com have a lot of success with giving it all away and charging strictly on the throttle, whereas companies like Uservoice.com need to utilize differentiation because of their value metric.
Feel free to send an email if you want to talk live about this: patrick[at]priceintelligently[dot]com
JoshTriplett · 2012-02-04
First of all, a disclaimer: ask a pile of interested people very carefully before deciding on prices; people suck at accurately saying how much they'd pay for something, and that almost certainly includes me. :) If you want to get fancy about it, take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Westendorp%27s_Price_Sensitivity_Met… , and perhaps http://www.priceintelligently.com/ ; if you don't want to get fancy about it, just make sure you talk to more than a few people.
That said: I actually think $4 would work nicely as a "project" price, and for more along the lines of 1 week rather than 2 months. That would nicely cover immediate one-time pain like the case I ran into. $4 falls squarely in the category of "yeah, I'll pay that to solve this problem today", and I'd have paid that just for the 1 day I needed to use it.
If you feel like you can comfortably serve people at $4/month, I'd absolutely pay that price without hesitation; $7/month seems reasonable too. Perhaps you should just treat that as the "project" case, and market it so that people think of it more as a "pay once and use it for a month" price than something they necessarily have to pay repeatedly for via a subscription. I think that'd make more sense than trying to go off the beaten path by talking about weeks. :) (Most "monthly" services don't really cater for the case of "let it lapse, then start paying again when I need it", but in the case of this project I think it would work beautifully to do…
sarimkhalid · 2023-07-22
Not qualified enough to give my own advice on this but I have been reading a lot on SaaS pricing so I'll drop a few resources that may help.
https://venturehacks.com/pricing
https://tomtunguz.com/the-100m-arr-deal/
https://tomtunguz.com/categories/pricing/
https://www.willingnesstopay.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@SaaSPricing/videos
https://www.priceintelligently.com/
(Look up more stuff from Patrick Campbell)
satvikpendem · 2023-04-12
No, because human psychology doesn't work with "honest, transparent pricing." People will go out of their way to buy things on sale even when the total cost is higher than it would be otherwise. JC Penney famously figured this out the hard way when they cut out all of their sales [0].
[0] https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/j-c-penny-s-pricing-strategy
30944836 · 2022-05-27
The situation is so much more complex than this, and involves a mix of legal agreements, corporate philosophy, and consumer psychology.
You might benefit from reading this article on Price Anchoring:
https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/bid/181199/price-anchoring-to-…
hn_throwaway_99 · 2020-07-16
I recall seeing this blog post a while back arguing you should never A/B test your pricing strategy (IIRC it was posted on HN, can't remember): https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/bid/180676/why-you-should-neve… . I'm curious about your thoughts on the points in this post.
mtmail · 2019-01-21
Look at the value you create, not the cost. In SaaS margins of 90% are possible if remove your time in the calculations. In B2B the decision maker has the same work with getting approval, adding you to their supplier list, dealing with their accounting department or filling out forms for $5 or $50. I'd even argue per-seat price model has disadvantages because the invoice amount might change month-to-month and requires additional re-confirmations of the customer's accounting department. Start with a higher price (be confident), you can always lower later or offer (time limited) discounts. $5/month is zero when you have to deal with 1-2 support emails, the first 12 months is zero when you have to do one Skype sales call.
Lots is written about SaaS pricing, it's complex. https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/ has a decent blog on that topic (and free ebook I seems).
KeepTalking · 2018-02-27
Very interestingly on a similar topic here is Netflix's pricing strategy. https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/netflix-pricing-strategy
thenaturalist · 2018-01-19
One of the more detailed free resources available on this topic I know of is this one: http://www.priceintelligently.com/hubfs/Price-Intelligently-SaaS-Prici…
Note: I am in no way affiliated with Price Intelligently and do not in any way intend to promote their service. Just wanted to share this free PDF.
kurttheviking · 2016-12-07
One article I routinely re-read is the Price Intelligently teardown of Hubspot's pricing: http://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/saas-pricing-page-teardown-hubs…
walterbell · 2015-01-15
Thanks for the reference to price anchoring, http://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/bid/181199/Price-Anchoring-to-O…
mmorris · 2014-11-21
Pricing is hard! I've found a lot of the content on the Price Intelligently blog to be helpful.
http://www.priceintelligently.com/blog
They are pricing consultants, but I haven't actually used them, just read their content.