Why I went for €1 instead of a free plan
I've just started to do a 6 SaaS in Six months project for myself. This is a way to try out SaaS ideas within a short time period to see if I can create an extra revenue stream and helps me further improve my SaaS boilerplate getparthenon.com at the same time.
On the first project repohealth.io I decided instead of having a free plan I would have a plan that was €1 a month or €10 yearly. One of the first bits of feedback I got was that this price was weird and confusing. It made sense to other people that I just have a free plan or make the price higher. But I've decided to stick with this price plan.
Why? The best validation is by people paying for it. €1 is low enough that it's basically free, €10 a year is so low that many of us can pay it without thinking more than a second about it. But it is still money and still requires someone to think: "Yea, I'm willing to pay for this."
For each SaaS, I will spend at least one month developing it for 2-3 hours a day. After that original month, I want to only focus on the SaaS that people want to use, which solves a problem for them. Therefore, to me, it really makes sense that the free plan is actually €1.
Any opinions on this approach?
That's so low that your payment provider's fees will eat up half of that on each charge.
I'm guessing earning money is not the goal for this SaaS?
You said the goal is to validate the idea. Well, if a user is willing to pay $1, they might as well pay $5, right? After all, with today's inflations that's kind of like $1 😅
Not only will you get 5x more revenue, it might actually signify potential users that it's a higher-quality product. Price affects perception of the product!
I also feel that 1€ signals low quality. Why not a) give a 90% launch discount for the first x user until {deadline}. Or a lifetime deal?
Yea! If anyone would be willing to spend $1 then you don't know if they are actually committed, maybe $5 might be better?
Low price points are usually considered 'not-so-great' in software/SaaS world.
If you really want to test and build a sustainable business, try a little bit higher pricing.
Higher prices tend to give more credibility usually in SaaS world assuming the target audience has good ROI.
There are higher prices. The €1 plan is literally instead of free plan which is rather limited.
My bad. Makes sense 👍
I have exactly the same feeling: basically free, but proves people take their card out of the wallet to try your product! 👍
I'll be testing this during the summer, I'll share my experience with you when the time comes.
I'm launching one of my site projects next week, It has $1/month, $10/year, $69/life-time pricing. I think you just need to experiment different prices and see for your self, that's my plan too.
I've been tempted by this sort of thing for Squeaky. We currently have a free plan and that has been great to get new users in, but at the same time 50% of those are just exploring cause it's free. They're not really interested in committing, and it's quite a lot of work to separate out who is worth pursuing and who is not. I think maybe something more like €5 even, like anyone who's willing to try a tool for €1 is surely also will try drop €5? Have you experimented with other small bottom tier prices?
I'm not sure not about the 1€ approach. It looks weird to me.
I do prefer fremium (if you can benefit from it), or maybe a paid trial of 14days for 1€ for instance.
But I may be wrong, let us know how it goes
I understand the idea behind it, but isn't $1 almost free. Also $1 might make people think that your product is cheaper. So what if you priced your product some $9/mo?
Hello @that_guy_iain, to be honest, I would just go with the price you intended, I would even go as far as to try doubling the price. Price too low, and people will think your solution is... well... cheap (in a bad sense). As long as you are solving a real problem and solving it well, people don't seem to have a problem paying for it (you could even add a "do you offer a discount? sure, just shoot me an email", this gives you a perfect opportunity to engage directly with the client at the cost of just losing a few bucks) Those are my two cents. Best of luck!
Free plans don't have much, it's more better going for a paid plan.
I'm not sure I agree. Sure, $1 is cheap and any body can afford it but the problem isn't the money, it's the simplicity. If I want to check out a new SaaS, I just want to maybe create an account and get right into using it. I don't want to think about entering my payment details just to be able to test the waters. Is it more valuable to have less users paying $1 or more users paying nothing but have the ability to convert at any moment? I guess you'll find out.
I am interested to know how to strategy plays out. I wish you luck and hope it accomplishes what you are looking for.
The amount of "loss" we feel is not proportionate to the amount people pay.
0-1 is huge.
1-3 is less because we already committed to paying something anyway.
This makes sense and is good validation
That's definitely a good idea, sort of like 2fa. While it might decrease the number of people signing up to try, it helps by bringing in better quality prospect users.
I think it can be a good idea if you have enough traffic to test it out.
Who is your target market for this one?
(On another note, you should try and record an actual voiceover for your explainer, the robotic voice lowers the vp in my opinion)
That’s a great idea, I totally see your point.
It would be great if you come back with your findings after testing it out :)
1€ is definietly better than 0€