4 ms·

One problem that I see with SaaS vendors (and I am working on my own SaaS), is that some of them are delirious with their pricings, in my humble opinion. For e

One problem that I see with SaaS vendors (and I am working on my own SaaS), is that some of them are delirious with their pricings, in my humble opinion. For example Duolingo. Love Duolingo. My kids use it. So we want to support them, but that means paying 120 euros per year per kid (240 euros!), so we use the free option. If they had a plan that was, I don't know, 1 euro per person per month, we will gladly pay 4 euros per month (we are 4), and then pay 48 euros per year. Or even a family plan of 5 euros per month per family of 4. Instead, we pay 0, and use the exact same resources. The same happened with a calendar service (those apps that allow you to reserve and appointment with a doctor or hairdresser or whatever). Their free tier was obviously 0. And then they asked for 30 dollars per month for 20 features. I needed only 2 of those features. I asked if there was a way to pay only for those. It wasn't. So I ended up moving to a competitor which was much cheaper (10).

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
> If they had a plan that was, I don't know, 1 euro per person per month If you're building your own SaaS you will quickly realize it's very difficult to build a sustainable business if you only charge 1 euro/month. I just looked up the price of Duolingo [0]. It looks like it's only ~6 euros/month not 10, but think about the difference in revenue between 6 euros and 1 euro. You need 6x as many customers at 1 euro/month to make the same amount of money! [0] https://www.duolingo.com/plus https://www.duolingo.com/plus
- kwanbix 6y ago
  I am not saying it is easy to make money. But the jump from free to next tier is too high for what it brings, basically nothing in the case of duolingo (no adds and for kids unlimited "lives"), and I use the same resources, only difference is that I am shown adds. I don't know what kind of analysis they did, but you can have 90% of your uses using your resources paying 0 euros per month, or you can try to have 50% of your users paying 1 euro per month. About the cost, I would gladly pay 60 euros a year for a family pack (4 people). You can even offer the Lite Family Pack for 60 euros and adds, and full family pack for 120 euros and no adds. Or something like that. But a family of four is 288 euros per year. That is a lot of money because it is not the only thing you pay, you pay duolingo, netflix, amazon prime, office 365, etc., and in some countries it is absolutely prohibitive. I mean, I would understand the pricing if they didn't have the free tier, but if you have it why that big jump in cost? And I am not saying it is not the same scale or anything, but in the beginning Whatsapp charged you 1 euro per YEAR! I know as I paid at least two years. It is a known fact that "consumers build internal reference prices in time through exposure to different prices. When they see a new price tag, they compare it to the reference price and form an opinion". If Office 365 or Google Suite can give so much value for 5 to 10 euros a month, it is hard to (at least mentally) justify paying that much for products that do less. And yes, I understand it is a perception thing. Another option is "free for non-commercial use" (teamviewr or irfanview for example) or "free if you make less than this much a year" (unity I think?). You can then have to different steps of payment, like free, basic, basic plus, premium, etc).

ZephyrBlu 6y ago

> If they had a plan that was, I don't know, 1 euro per person per month If you're building your own SaaS you will quickly realize it's very difficult to build a sustainable business if you only charge 1 euro/month. I just looked up the price of Duolingo [0]. It looks like it's only ~6 euros/month not 10, but think about the difference in revenue between 6 euros and 1 euro. You need 6x as many customers at 1 euro/month to make the same amount of money! [0] https://www.duolingo.com/plus https://www.duolingo.com/plus

kwanbix 6y ago
I am not saying it is easy to make money. But the jump from free to next tier is too high for what it brings, basically nothing in the case of duolingo (no adds and for kids unlimited "lives"), and I use the same resources, only difference is that I am shown adds. I don't know what kind of analysis they did, but you can have 90% of your uses using your resources paying 0 euros per month, or you can try to have 50% of your users paying 1 euro per month. About the cost, I would gladly pay 60 euros a year for a family pack (4 people). You can even offer the Lite Family Pack for 60 euros and adds, and full family pack for 120 euros and no adds. Or something like that. But a family of four is 288 euros per year. That is a lot of money because it is not the only thing you pay, you pay duolingo, netflix, amazon prime, office 365, etc., and in some countries it is absolutely prohibitive. I mean, I would understand the pricing if they didn't have the free tier, but if you have it why that big jump in cost? And I am not saying it is not the same scale or anything, but in the beginning Whatsapp charged you 1 euro per YEAR! I know as I paid at least two years. It is a known fact that "consumers build internal reference prices in time through exposure to different prices. When they see a new price tag, they compare it to the reference price and form an opinion". If Office 365 or Google Suite can give so much value for 5 to 10 euros a month, it is hard to (at least mentally) justify paying that much for products that do less. And yes, I understand it is a perception thing. Another option is "free for non-commercial use" (teamviewr or irfanview for example) or "free if you make less than this much a year" (unity I think?). You can then have to different steps of payment, like free, basic, basic plus, premium, etc).