

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

Currently in my saas product I have two plans<p>+ light - 5 products a month<p>+ gold - unlimited # of products a month<p>The plans are monthly subscriptions to make nutrition facts labels.<p>Now I am wondering if any other sass owners out there opted to drop their unlimited plan to some high number like:<p>+ gold - 100 products a month<p>Has anyone experimented on how using the word &#x27;unlimited&#x27; affects your sales?
======
glimcat
"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
That's a good article but it glosses over this comment:
[https://baremetrics.io/blog/never-offer-
unlimited#comment-13...](https://baremetrics.io/blog/never-offer-
unlimited#comment-1395398815)

Never ever listen to people who use the words never and ever.

------
Spooky23
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
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.

------
davismwfl
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
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.

------
saluki
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.

------
gizmo
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
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.

------
justinnoel
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
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.

