
The Saddest SaaS Pricing Pages of the Year - pccampbell
http://blog.priceintelligently.com/blog/bid/192297/The-Saddest-SaaS-Pricing-Pages-of-the-Year
======
fotbr
At least they HAVE pricing pages. Quickest way to lose a potential sale (and
all future potential sales and references) is to not provide pricing
information because you're stuck in the sales-rep model where I have to
call/email/otherwise contact you when all I want is an estimate so I know if
I'm looking at a trivial-dollars-a-year or a reorganize-the-entire-budget-to-
pay-for-this product/service.

~~~
nostromo
Either everyone that does this is an idiot (unlikely) or it actually works for
their markets and increases their bottom line (likely).

I once worked for a fairly big (500m-1b market cap) company that worked this
way. Pricing was customized for every client. They, like many companies, made
a ton of money doing this.

One down side, however, was that this business model can trap you. Once you've
sold customers at lots of different price points, you can never go back and
publish pricing, since those customers that are overpaying will be upset. You
could set your prices high, but that would turn off many new customers who
need a lower price point. So, while you can make a lot of money doing this,
give it some thought before committing to it.

This is why Google Adwords is so genius. It's both dynamic (charging more for
bigger pockets) and it scales, which is hard balance to strike.

~~~
danielweber
> Either everyone that does this is an idiot (unlikely) or it actually works
> for their markets and increases their bottom line (likely).

Yep. I've been in start-ups where via simple pricing we drained the well for
all other players, grabbing everything for ourselves. I've also been in start-
ups where we found out that simple come-to-us pricing simply does not work and
they needed an active sales rep process for the majority of the customers.
(And if the majority need it, sorry, we can't just display prices. Losing the
sale to you is worth keeping the other 90% of our sales.)

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abruzzi
I don't know. As a SaaS buyer (occasionally) I have to take strong
disagreement with some of the points. For instance the first two sites links--
first bad, second good. Both show pricing structure, the "bad" one shows a
feature list with a bunch of check boxes. I wish more vendors did this. I look
at it and I know what I'm getting with the basic plan. I know what each
increment buys me.

I look at the second example--the "good" example--and the basic plan looks
like it gives me---nothing. So now I have to go to some other marketing page,
read the description, then, in my head, subtract all the great things that
higher tiers give me to figure out what exactly I'd get with the base tier.
Having it all in one place is preferable to me. The second problem with the
"good" site is by summarizing feature each plan comes with, rather than being
more specific, they are assuming that they know what is important to me. What
if I could care less (and this has happened to me several times) about some
big picture feature, and just need the version that provides database X
integration? More clicking, and more likelihood that I buy a higher specced
plan that I actually need.

And that is where I think these come from. Not a desire clearly layout what
you get for your money, but a desire to obfuscate just enough with requisite
marketing to push you towards more expensive options.

------
smtddr
[http://i.imgur.com/LjJhc2Q.png](http://i.imgur.com/LjJhc2Q.png)

Anyone here ever been to Santana Row in San Jose? They have a GUCCI store in
there; no prices are displayed for anything.

 _" If you have to ask, then we're too expensive for you."_

It's like how most of us can generally walk into any Target Store or even
Macy's(well, some of us) and just buy what we like without looking at the
price.... or maybe this is just me.

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brianbreslin
I spoke to a friend the other day with a SaaS and they are aiming at the long-
tail of sites as their customers, and they chose 1 price plan, regardless of
how big the customer sites were. Their advisor said simplifying would reduce
fear in customers, especially small businesses.

I've been considering a similar approach for a simple SaaS we run, which we
have had trouble with getting traction for.

~~~
pccampbell
Hmmm. It really depends on the product/customer. The big thing here is that
you don't have to have a perfect pricing strategy out of the gate (or ever);
it's iterative.

Look at the Hootsuite example for instance - at this point with 8 million
users they should really have more than one plan because there are several
different personas in the mix.

Buffer on the other hand had a mono-price schema for a long time, because they
wanted the simplicity while they were getting traction (to your point). Now
that they're solid, they've been iterating the product and the pricing into
their business plan.

Big points:

\- Each customer persona = a pricing tier \- Price based on the customer
willingness to pay = talk to them about pricing \- Iterate - your pricing
should change as your product and customer do

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leowidrich
This is amazing, huge thanks for the analysis of our pricing page Patrick!
Will go ahead and work on that for sure, some great pointers, you're right,
there's so much power in the new analytics and we're not conveying that very
well at all.

~~~
brianlovin
Yep, thanks for including Buffer here (I designed this pricing page) - there's
lots of improvements to be made here which will be coming soon :)

~~~
pccampbell
Sounds good. Check out that ebook if you want a good survey of the land of
pricing pages. Feel free to reach out too if you want a sounding board.

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justinsteele
Looks like Dyn has changed theirs; [http://dyn.com/email-delivery-
express/](http://dyn.com/email-delivery-express/)

~~~
pccampbell
Wow. This just happened, as I took the screenshot very early this morning. Not
a big fan of the change in terms of clarity, but there's improvement in the
product marketing around why their solution is better than Maildril, Amazon,
etc.

Biggest thing I'm curious about from a data perspective concerns the science
behind the thresholds they've set. You want to see where the break in usage or
value is and make sure you capture 95% of that group. Power users of that plan
are then pushed into the next plan accordingly.

~~~
justinsteele
For what it's worth, I got to that page by clicking "Email Delivery Express"
via their dropdown from their homepage - [http://dyn.com/](http://dyn.com/)

If you click the link in the article it still is the older version.

------
dandare
@StackMob there is no price and call to action button on your "pricing" sub
page [https://www.stackmob.com/pricing/](https://www.stackmob.com/pricing/) .
I am confused.

[https://twitter.com/daniel_sedlacek/statuses/415108372422094...](https://twitter.com/daniel_sedlacek/statuses/415108372422094848)

------
elwell
What does HN think of my pricing section on
[http://wesawit.com](http://wesawit.com) ? Any feedback?

~~~
mik3y
Random, non-target-customer opinion: The slider is nice. However, it's not
obvious how the venue size it selects (and the corresponding pricing tiers)
affect the service offered. For example, what happens if I'm dishonest?

It seems like you're trying to tier the pricing based on a customer attribute
(their venue size) rather than actual customer usage (ie their interest in
value-added features, increased quota for certain features, etc). It seems
hard to enforce, and also harder to upsell (ie if I'm a smaller fry, I'm never
going to buy your premium plan). But I'm quite a bit out of my league here..

~~~
elwell
Good points; thanks.

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socalnate1
I wish the blog had "fixed" each of the poor examples to show what they would
have done.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
And leave money on the table?

If it were my blog, I would have included a link to _" Pay me to show you what
I would have done differently"_, or some other equally organic and not-too-
weasely way of selling exactly that service: Reporting on best and worst
examples is one thing, relatively LHF, but working with a company to improve
is something they should be rewarded for!

Not to mention that doing so may require a company to completely overhaul
sales and marketing. Or culture. Or both.

LHF: Low hanging fruit, easily obtainable item.

EDIT: PCCAMPBELL was replying at the same time as me. I like their reply.

~~~
pccampbell
Ha! Well, I didn't want to be completely blatant. A lot of our content tells
you how to solve the problem, but yes - we do have software and tech services
to help you. Work with folks like New Relic, Insightly, Wistia, etc.

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jameszhang
I work at Wistia. Glad that we made it to the list of __good __pricing pages!

~~~
pccampbell
Nice! We're big fans. :)

Tell Brendan to stop grinding his coffee so loudly.

\- Patrick

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vylan
Thanks for the feedback on the Qualaroo pricing page, Patrick.

~~~
pccampbell
No worries. Love the product!

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jaboyer42
fotbr - nice observation. In my opinion, illusive (or non-existent) pricing
pages only frustrate prospective customers and serve as a barrier.

~~~
tdawson
Indeed. Not having a pricing page is an easy way to turn off prospects who
want to remain silent!

------
circa
"Sell me this pen"

~~~
peterox
“Oh, you don’t have a pen anymore. Supply and demand, bro.”

~~~
pccampbell
Noooooooooooooo. :)

