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Ask HN: Wording for top tier plan: unlimited or a high quantity

13 points by palidanx 12y ago

Currently in my saas product I have two plans + light - 5 products a month + gold - unlimited # of products a month The plans are monthly subscriptions to make nutrition facts labels. Now I am wondering if any other sass owners out there opted to drop their unlimited plan to some high number like: + gold - 100 products a month Has anyone experimented on how using the word 'unlimited' affects your sales?

glimcat 12y ago
"Why an “Unlimited” Plan is Toxic for Your SaaS" -- Josh Pigford, Baremetrics https://baremetrics.io/blog/never-offer-unlimited https://baremetrics.io/blog/never-offer-unlimited
- mbesto 12y ago
  That's a good article but it glosses over this comment: https://baremetrics.io/blog/never-offer-unlimited#comment-1395398815 https://baremetrics.io/blog/never-offer-unlimited#comment-13... Never ever listen to people who use the words never and ever.
davismwfl 12y ago
We haven't experimented with it yet ourselves, would love to hear from people that have.. However, I'll share our thought process. We are launching a new service shortly that we have placed limits on every feature where we have external costs to pay. Any feature we have that is internal to our software, like adding more records etc, we don't really have limits except where we found it helps people to select the right tier. And on our plans where there is a limit, we allow people to purchase blocks above their service level, either as a 1 time add-on or on-going basis. For example, we provide SMS messages as part of each tier, so if your plan offers 1000 SMS messages monthly, but this month you need to send 2000, you can just pay for a block of 1000 more and not have an ongoing fee. We don't sell them by the message, but in blocks. But if you find yourself needing that permanently it might make more sense to upgrade the plan. Also, we have a threshold that if someone goes over our "limit" within a certain percentage we do not charge anything additional for it. We did this because in beta we had a few clients schedule like 10-20 extra messages in a single month, and it just seemed wrong to force them to purchase a block for such a small overage. But if we see that occurring for 90days then we have the system alert us to reach out and talk to the client. We also have an enterprise tier where yea, pretty much everything is negotiable and can be unlimited with the appropriate pricing associated. And enterprise clients we will quote individually, as I would see those types of customer feeling more comfortable talking with an account manager anyway and having a plan tailored specifically to their needs.
- palidanx 12y ago
  Thanks for the info for an example of pricing that takes into account costs when scaling (meaning more costs with more usage). I am also curious on what other saas owners are doing with these situations. There also is another set of saas apps which when the usage goes up, costs don't scale up proportionally so pricing would be a little more arbitrary relative to the market I would imagine.
gizmo 12y ago
If you haven't tried a bunch of different pricing schemes(tiered vs usage based, few tiers vs many, freemium or pay only, free trial or CC up front) then whatever you're doing now has got to be comically suboptimal. If you're at the early stage you don't want to make minor tweaks to your pricing (to hone in on what works best) but you want to make big changes to figure out what works at all. Do you have customers right now that have more than 100 products? If so, does that mean your customers have money and are getting value from your SaaS app? Are you charging them $1000/mo? If not, why not?
- palidanx 12y ago
  Well one of the challenges of constantly tweaking the pricing model is my saas app doesn't have a high volume of clients say like a mobile app. To your point about a 1,000 a month, competitors are charging less in the same space, but I don't think my clients are actively price shopping as they subscribe when they need it immediately. There aren't many vendors that generate more than 100 though.
Spooky23 12y ago
You should look for some of patio11's posts on these topics. If someone is creating more than 100 food labels a month, they are making, importing, or selling a ton of product, and you need to make sure that your pricing in reflective of the value they receive.
- palidanx 12y ago
  As for the usage, there is a mixed tier. You have like about 10% of the clients who generate less than 5 labels and then cancel at the end of the month. Afterwards you have a set who hold on subscriptions because they need to reformulate occasionally. Then you have a large set who subscribe for a month and generate about 50 labels and cancel.
justinnoel 12y ago
I'm looking at your site (menutail.com) + competitors and unlimited is already an established plan in your market. Should you break this market-established plan/packaging? Giving a number (regardless of the amount) can give an impression of limiting a user. Conversions (theoretically) may e affected (+/- 2%) specially when a customer is comparing between similar pricing / same feature products. I would be happy to help you out on your AB testing when you think it's time. Like to see how this goes. :)
- palidanx 12y ago
  That is true that the competition is priced in a similar fashion. One of the things I've learned recently is that our client's have an average of 41 products and in the next year every food vendor will be forced to make new labels. I guess I'm curious if any vendor has been successful in putting an artificial limit with a positive client perception.
saluki 12y ago
Don't offer an unlimited plan . . . I would go with a 4 plan approach . . . Hobby up to 5 products per month Foodie up to 10 products per month Vendor up to 25 products per month Business up to 50 products per month Then 'Need more than 50 products per month? Click here for enterprise pricing. Then have another pricing page just for enterprise. Enterprise I Up to 100 Enterprise II Up to 150 Enterprise III Up to 200 Enterprise IV Up to 250 these would go up to top tier plans with prices that might see pie in the sky to you . . . but capture the value of large scale clients . . . The have a link to a contact form . . . need more than 250 products click here to contact us to custom plans.

13 points by palidanx 12y ago

glimcat 12y ago

"Why an “Unlimited” Plan is Toxic for Your SaaS" -- Josh Pigford, Baremetrics https://baremetrics.io/blog/never-offer-unlimited https://baremetrics.io/blog/never-offer-unlimited

mbesto 12y ago
That's a good article but it glosses over this comment: https://baremetrics.io/blog/never-offer-unlimited#comment-1395398815 https://baremetrics.io/blog/never-offer-unlimited#comment-13... Never ever listen to people who use the words never and ever.

davismwfl 12y ago

We haven't experimented with it yet ourselves, would love to hear from people that have.. However, I'll share our thought process. We are launching a new service shortly that we have placed limits on every feature where we have external costs to pay. Any feature we have that is internal to our software, like adding more records etc, we don't really have limits except where we found it helps people to select the right tier. And on our plans where there is a limit, we allow people to purchase blocks above their service level, either as a 1 time add-on or on-going basis. For example, we provide SMS messages as part of each tier, so if your plan offers 1000 SMS messages monthly, but this month you need to send 2000, you can just pay for a block of 1000 more and not have an ongoing fee. We don't sell them by the message, but in blocks. But if you find yourself needing that permanently it might make more sense to upgrade the plan. Also, we have a threshold that if someone goes over our "limit" within a certain percentage we do not charge anything additional for it. We did this because in beta we had a few clients schedule like 10-20 extra messages in a single month, and it just seemed wrong to force them to purchase a block for such a small overage. But if we see that occurring for 90days then we have the system alert us to reach out and talk to the client. We also have an enterprise tier where yea, pretty much everything is negotiable and can be unlimited with the appropriate pricing associated. And enterprise clients we will quote individually, as I would see those types of customer feeling more comfortable talking with an account manager anyway and having a plan tailored specifically to their needs.

palidanx 12y ago
Thanks for the info for an example of pricing that takes into account costs when scaling (meaning more costs with more usage). I am also curious on what other saas owners are doing with these situations. There also is another set of saas apps which when the usage goes up, costs don't scale up proportionally so pricing would be a little more arbitrary relative to the market I would imagine.

gizmo 12y ago

If you haven't tried a bunch of different pricing schemes(tiered vs usage based, few tiers vs many, freemium or pay only, free trial or CC up front) then whatever you're doing now has got to be comically suboptimal. If you're at the early stage you don't want to make minor tweaks to your pricing (to hone in on what works best) but you want to make big changes to figure out what works at all. Do you have customers right now that have more than 100 products? If so, does that mean your customers have money and are getting value from your SaaS app? Are you charging them $1000/mo? If not, why not?

palidanx 12y ago
Well one of the challenges of constantly tweaking the pricing model is my saas app doesn't have a high volume of clients say like a mobile app. To your point about a 1,000 a month, competitors are charging less in the same space, but I don't think my clients are actively price shopping as they subscribe when they need it immediately. There aren't many vendors that generate more than 100 though.

Spooky23 12y ago

You should look for some of patio11's posts on these topics. If someone is creating more than 100 food labels a month, they are making, importing, or selling a ton of product, and you need to make sure that your pricing in reflective of the value they receive.

palidanx 12y ago
As for the usage, there is a mixed tier. You have like about 10% of the clients who generate less than 5 labels and then cancel at the end of the month. Afterwards you have a set who hold on subscriptions because they need to reformulate occasionally. Then you have a large set who subscribe for a month and generate about 50 labels and cancel.

justinnoel 12y ago

I'm looking at your site (menutail.com) + competitors and unlimited is already an established plan in your market. Should you break this market-established plan/packaging? Giving a number (regardless of the amount) can give an impression of limiting a user. Conversions (theoretically) may e affected (+/- 2%) specially when a customer is comparing between similar pricing / same feature products. I would be happy to help you out on your AB testing when you think it's time. Like to see how this goes. :)

palidanx 12y ago
That is true that the competition is priced in a similar fashion. One of the things I've learned recently is that our client's have an average of 41 products and in the next year every food vendor will be forced to make new labels. I guess I'm curious if any vendor has been successful in putting an artificial limit with a positive client perception.

saluki 12y ago

Don't offer an unlimited plan . . . I would go with a 4 plan approach . . . Hobby up to 5 products per month Foodie up to 10 products per month Vendor up to 25 products per month Business up to 50 products per month Then 'Need more than 50 products per month? Click here for enterprise pricing. Then have another pricing page just for enterprise. Enterprise I Up to 100 Enterprise II Up to 150 Enterprise III Up to 200 Enterprise IV Up to 250 these would go up to top tier plans with prices that might see pie in the sky to you . . . but capture the value of large scale clients . . . The have a link to a contact form . . . need more than 250 products click here to contact us to custom plans.