Ask IH: should you launch with a lower price and increase with traction?
I see two options here:
- You launch on PH/Twitter/etc with a lower monthly/annual price to test the market and get some traction. If things go well, you up the price (with the option of grandfathering old users)
- Or you launch with the "normal" price right off the bat, and see where that leads you.
What are your thoughts on this? I've always wondered about it and wanted to know what fellow Indie Hackers think!
Managing different pricing systems can add more tedious work, but I would definitely pick option #1. I did that at most of my previous companies, and it always made the early adopters greater ambassadors!
Good luck!
Good feedback. I'm thinking the same. Thank you!
The earlier you charge what you want - the sooner you validate your business model.
I was also wondering about the same and had asked here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-to-decide-on-pricing-the-custom-project-for-my-first-prospective-customer-e3eb9abfef
I would probably recommend #1 as well.
I think different products benefit from different pricing strategies.
Products that are higher effort to support customers should start out with higher prices generally. A good analogy is how Tesla started with the expensive Roadster and got more efficient and better at scaling for the cheaper priced models.
Consumer apps or products with larger pools of potential users can start with lower prices and use that as a way to get more user feedback early and refine towards a better product (similar to your #1 option). Sometimes just getting early customer feedback is the most important thing.
Some products benefit from being able to upsell existing users later, so pricing at the beginning can be very low (or possibly even free). TailwindCSS is my favorite example of this. They started as a completely free open-source library. Then they created TailwindUI as a product they could sell to their massive user base.
Ok, this is super complete. I guess that in my case, it would be something similar to #2. I'm working on copydocks.com, and I need to refine some things - so those initial customers would be incredibly valuable. Thank you for the feedback!
It really depends on your product, does it require other users to gain value? If so then yes, start with a lower value. That's what I am doing with the WBE Space. It costs $5 month for now and I know that I could price it higher. But at the moment I value more having new members because I know the value of the community will increase
It's for copydocks.com - so more users won't increase its value. But as @jkchu said, by pricing lower I can get some initial customers that will give valuable feedback 🤔
You launch on PH/Twitter/etc with a lower monthly/annual price to test the market and get some traction. If things go well, you up the price (with the option of grandfathering old users)