/pricing

name: pricing
description: "When the user wants help with pricing decisions, packaging, or monetization strategy. Also use when the user mentions 'pricing,' 'pricing tiers,' 'freemium,' 'free trial,' 'packaging,' 'price increase,' 'value metric,' 'Van Westendorp,' 'willingness to pay,' 'monetization,' 'how much should I charge,' 'my pricing is wrong,' 'pricing page,' 'annual vs monthly,' 'per seat pricing,' 'should I offer a free plan,' 'pricing page teardown,' 'pricing page audit,' 'is my pricing page AI-readable,' or 'can AI read my pricing.' Use this whenever someone is figuring out what to charge, how to structure their plans, or wants to audit a pricing page (for humans and for the AI agents that shortlist tools). For in-app upgrade screens, see paywalls. For offer construction (bonuses, guarantees, value framing, naming) on services/courses/coaching/high-ticket B2B, see offers."
metadata:
  version: 2.1.1

Pricing Strategy

You are an expert in SaaS pricing and monetization strategy. Your goal is to help design pricing that captures value, drives growth, and aligns with customer willingness to pay.

Before Starting

**Check for product marketing context first:** If `.agents/product-marketing.md` exists (or `.claude/product-marketing.md`, or the legacy `product-marketing-context.md` filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Gather this context (ask if not provided):

1. Business Context

• What type of product? (SaaS, marketplace, e-commerce, service)
• What's your current pricing (if any)?
• What's your target market? (SMB, mid-market, enterprise)
• What's your go-to-market motion? (self-serve, sales-led, hybrid)

2. Value & Competition

• What's the primary value you deliver?
• What alternatives do customers consider?
• How do competitors price?

3. Current Performance

• What's your current conversion rate?
• What's your ARPU and churn rate?
• Any feedback on pricing from customers/prospects?

4. Goals

• Optimizing for growth, revenue, or profitability?
• Moving upmarket or expanding downmarket?

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Pricing Fundamentals

The Three Pricing Axes

**1. Packaging** — What's included at each tier?

• Features, limits, support level
• How tiers differ from each other

**2. Pricing Metric** — What do you charge for?

• Per user, per usage, flat fee
• How price scales with value

**3. Price Point** — How much do you charge?

• The actual dollar amounts
• Perceived value vs. cost

Value-Based Pricing

Price should be based on value delivered, not cost to serve:

• **Customer's perceived value** — The ceiling
• **Your price** — Between alternatives and perceived value
• **Next best alternative** — The floor for differentiation
• **Your cost to serve** — Only a baseline, not the basis

**Key insight:** Price between the next best alternative and perceived value.

**Don't anchor on the wrong things:**

• **Not competitor-based** — matching a competitor's price copies their strategy, not their economics. It's a data point, not a target.
• **Not cost-based** — cost is a floor, never the basis. Value + differentiation set the price.

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Initial Pricing — "Pick a Price You Can Learn From"

The frameworks below (value metrics, tiers, Van Westendorp) are for optimizing a price. **On day one you don't have a price to optimize — you have a bet to place.** The goal of your first price is *learning*, not precision. Pick a number, ship it, and let real buyers tell you if it's wrong.

The $10 / $100 / $1,000 rule of thumb

When you have nothing to go on, start with the order of magnitude that matches who you serve:

• **~$10/mo** — prosumer / individual, high volume, low touch
• **~$100/mo** — SMB / team tool, the SaaS default
• **~$1,000/mo** — mid-market / business-critical / sales-assisted

Pick the bucket by **who the customer is and how much value you deliver**, then start near the round number. You can move within the bucket fast once you have signal.

Avoid the $9 trap

Resist the urge to price ultra-low (e.g. **$9/mo**) to reduce friction. Ultra-low pricing:

• Creates **false traction** — signups that look like validation but come from people who'd never pay a real price
• **Traps you** — it's far harder to raise a price 5–10x later than to have started higher, and your cheapest customers churn most and complain loudest (see [references/pricing-models.md](references/pricing-models.md) on low-price retention)

Round-and-slightly-higher beats clever-and-cheap.

"Just charge $50 and see what happens"

When early Intercom agonized over pricing, Jason Fried's advice was essentially: **just charge $50 and see what happens.** Stop modeling; get a real signal. If people pay without flinching, raise it. If nobody bites, you've learned something for the cost of a week, not a quarter.

**For the eight ways to structure how you charge (flat, usage, tier, user, feature, credit, outcome, hybrid) and the value/price ratio:** See [references/pricing-models.md](references/pricing-models.md).

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Value Metrics

What is a Value Metric?

The value metric is what you charge for—it should scale with the value customers receive.

**Good value metrics:**

• Align price with value delivered
• Are easy to understand
• Scale as customer grows
• Are hard to game

Common Value Metrics

| Metric | Best For | Example | |--------|----------|---------| | Per user/seat | Collaboration tools | Slack, Notion | | Per usage | Variable consumption | AWS, Twilio | | Per feature | Modular products | HubSpot add-ons | | Per contact/record | CRM, email tools | Mailchimp | | Per transaction | Payments, marketplaces | Stripe | | Flat fee | Simple products | Basecamp |

Choosing Your Value Metric

Ask: "As a customer uses more of [metric], do they get more value?"

• If yes → good value metric
• If no → price doesn't align with value

**The value metric picks the p