Usage based, vs features based pricing
Currently Bear Blog is using feature-based pricing. Essentially, upgrade and gain access to styling, analytics, and a few more features under construction.
However, I'd actually like to make these features available to everyone and instead charge for usage over a specific threshold (similarly to how analyitics platforms work).
Here's an example:
0 - 20,000 pageviews per month - free
20,000 - 100,000 pageviews per month - $14
100,000 - 500,000 pageviews per month - $24
etc
This alines the blogger's incentives with mine. We both want their blog to prosper.
Thoughts?
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You need a bit of both. In my experience customers on the lower end look for usage-based plans, whereas companies with deep pockets look for features.
I have companies on my most expensive plan that only use a fraction of the plan allowance.
Usage-based billing makes revenue easier to scale up particularly for B2B SaaS. 100% companies just pay their bill no matter what it is after they've made a purchasing decision (within reason). So, once you get the right people in an organization to say "We're adopting ___ solution for ___ problem", that's it. You're in. You just keep scaling up as more people get more value from your product. And if you're not, you're doing it wrong.
B2C is a tougher nut to crack. Usage-based pricing isn't as popular, because customers constantly see and re-evaluate their purchasing decisions. You need them to realize they're getting more value and feel like they deserve to be paying more.
When you test this in a focus group or usability setting, the pricing you're laying out usually gets described as "punishing me for using the app more". Pageviews are things someone else does (not the person paying for the blog). Agency is removed, and you're likely going to get some negative perceptions at this price.
The path of least resistance for an app like this is feature-gated pricing.
That makes perfectly rational sense to me. Thanks for taking the time to write this out.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
That's fair. I think that it may even be something that is more suited to Github sponsors than a SaaS.