Launching paid plans to existing beta users

Thank your beta users for the valuable feedback/insights they gave you. They truly helped shape the product. In turn you like to give them xx% discount on your yearly plan using this coupon code here. Or just for the first year.
Something along these lines. I wouldn't force them into a plan just yet.

Hi @Joshralph - I've been in this situation before (with my first startup a few years ago) and I'm afraid you probably won't like my answer:

Forget about it.

I'm assuming your current users didn't sign up knowing that they would have to pay at some point in the near future? Or maybe you've even asked them what they are willing to pay?

If not, then I'd assume your current users' perceived value of Padlock Spy is {{set-up time}} + $0 fee.

It might sound counterintuitive to you, but because you anchored your current users' expectations at $0, I'm 99% sure it will be significantly easier for you to convince new customers that Padlock Spy is worth $X/month than it will be to convince current users.

Therefore, my suggested next steps are as follows:

1. Focus on acquiring new customers, not converting current ones

2. Justify price increase (only to current customers) in terms of unsustainable cost to you not value of product. Do this in a quick and friendly email giving them at least two weeks to cancel/find an alternative before shutting down their access.

3. For the users who don't immediately cancel or convert to a paying user, wait a week or so and then offer them a year's free subscription in return for a glowing testimonial to use on your landing page. This will probably be worth more in terms of initial traction/conversion rates anyway.

4. Learn from this experience (most of us have been through the same thing) and don't just give away your product for free next time :)

5. (not really related but worth thinking about anyway) Rework the content of your landing page to focus less on what your product does and more on why I need your product. At the moment, a prospective customer can easily understand how your product solves a problem, but nothing about why this problem is important to them personally. To make them care about the former, you need to engage them on the latter first.

Good luck!

I just read a blog post about pricing and there was an interesting method that I hadn't heard of before.

https://blog.canny.io/saas-pricing-lessons/

Go about half way down or Ctrl F for "Van Westendorp". Basically this team asked their customers the following 4 questions (below). The resulting graph will help to determine the sweet spot. In this particular post, they felt like they didn't have enough responses, but YMMV.

1 At what price would you think Canny to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it? (Too expensive)

2 At what price would you think Canny to be so cheap that you would question the quality? (Too cheap)

3 At what price would you think Canny is starting to get expensive, but you would still consider it? (Expensive/High Side)

4 At what price would you think Canny to be a bargain—a great buy for the money? (Cheap/Good Value)

try giving them 6 months for free before you charge them so that they have time to look elsewhere..

our beta customers were probably the most valuable customers ever..