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Ask HN: Review our app's subscription plans/page

1 points by callmeed 18y ago

There has been some really good discussions here lately about subscription pricing and sign-up page layout for SaaS startups. I thought perhaps some of you kind folks would like to review our plans/pricing page and offer suggestions for improvement. Background: NextProof is an e-commerce app that let's pro photographers create galleries for selling prints, digital negatives, and other products. It's primarily targeted at the wedding and portrait photography market. We launched in May and currently have a strong user base and are growing at a nice clip. I would, of course, like to improve it if possible. One idea we had is to try and attract more part-time photographers/hobbyists who want to earn some extra income shooting events, selling fine art, etc. Any, all feedback on the pricing page is welcome, but I'm especially curious about: - Should our free plan be more prominent? - Should we consider a plan between free and basic ($9 or $12/mo)? http://www.nextproof.com/pricing/ Thanks so much.

noodle 18y ago
i would suggest calibrating the transaction fee % to make it end up being a moderately more expensive option if someone were to use it heavily (dunno if 9% is optimum for that or not), and then make the free one more prominent. that way, its a solid income generator if people don't want to pay upfront. this way, not like its losing you any money or an inconsistent revenue stream like it would be if it were ad-based. (also, i don't like the basecamp model where the free version is unobvious). i think you would be the best judge on the needing another tier. i think, though, that if you take the previous suggestion i made, you're probably fine. make the free tier enough more expensive that its useful to use on a trial basis or on a non-professional basis, but if you want to start making some serious transactions, you'll want to have a paid sub. /$0.02
- callmeed 18y ago
  Good stuff, thanks. I actually just ran a report and was surprised by the amount of transactions free accounts were processing. I figured most free accounts were just for messing around–but people are actually selling stuff with them. And the average transaction amount was only slightly lower for free accounts. I'll consider that–most of our competitors have much higher trans. fees so we have some room to move that up.
cperciva 18y ago
Why have plans at all? In all seriousness, Amazon Web Services seems to have done well with usage-based pricing, and I haven't had any complaints about the fact that tarsnap doesn't have "plans". Quite to the contrary -- people seem to love telling their friends that they're paying a fraction of a cent per month.
- callmeed 18y ago
  Off the top of my head, I would say it's because Amazon web services (and possibly tarsnap) is aimed at hackers/developers/sys admins. Our service really isn't.
  - cperciva 18y ago
    Good point. The sort of people who use tarsnap are the sort of people who are likely to know what picodollars are. :-)
cabalamat 18y ago
Changes I would make: - put the free plan at the right of the table in the same format as the others. - possibly introduce a new column at the left of the table naming the feature and then either a tick or a cross to say whether it applies to that plan - I didn't understand what the features "send directly to ProDPI", "Domain mapping", and "email tools" mean; these should be expained.

1 points by callmeed 18y ago

noodle 18y ago

i would suggest calibrating the transaction fee % to make it end up being a moderately more expensive option if someone were to use it heavily (dunno if 9% is optimum for that or not), and then make the free one more prominent. that way, its a solid income generator if people don't want to pay upfront. this way, not like its losing you any money or an inconsistent revenue stream like it would be if it were ad-based. (also, i don't like the basecamp model where the free version is unobvious). i think you would be the best judge on the needing another tier. i think, though, that if you take the previous suggestion i made, you're probably fine. make the free tier enough more expensive that its useful to use on a trial basis or on a non-professional basis, but if you want to start making some serious transactions, you'll want to have a paid sub. /$0.02

callmeed 18y ago
Good stuff, thanks. I actually just ran a report and was surprised by the amount of transactions free accounts were processing. I figured most free accounts were just for messing around–but people are actually selling stuff with them. And the average transaction amount was only slightly lower for free accounts. I'll consider that–most of our competitors have much higher trans. fees so we have some room to move that up.

cperciva 18y ago

Why have plans at all? In all seriousness, Amazon Web Services seems to have done well with usage-based pricing, and I haven't had any complaints about the fact that tarsnap doesn't have "plans". Quite to the contrary -- people seem to love telling their friends that they're paying a fraction of a cent per month.

callmeed 18y ago
Off the top of my head, I would say it's because Amazon web services (and possibly tarsnap) is aimed at hackers/developers/sys admins. Our service really isn't.
- cperciva 18y ago
  Good point. The sort of people who use tarsnap are the sort of people who are likely to know what picodollars are. :-)

cabalamat 18y ago

Changes I would make: - put the free plan at the right of the table in the same format as the others. - possibly introduce a new column at the left of the table naming the feature and then either a tick or a cross to say whether it applies to that plan - I didn't understand what the features "send directly to ProDPI", "Domain mapping", and "email tools" mean; these should be expained.