Volume discounts for big clients worked fine and helped us close deals.

Annual discounts are also a good win-win, but to convert well the difference has to be significant. At 30% off signups spiked. At 15% the effect was much smaller.

Urgency campaigns surprised us. For a few months, every last week we ran “Sign up in the next 5 days and get 25% off.” Conversions went up on those days, but the real win was retention. These customers stayed longer because they didn’t want to lose their deal.

Still, we never made it a regular thing. It feels unfair to existing customers who paid full price. And if you repeat it too often, people just wait for discounts. That only cuts your revenue.

We never tried lifetime deals. For B2B, in my opinion, it doesn’t really fit. Small clients don’t want to pay a big sum upfront and large ones make it unprofitable. Honestly, it can even cheapen your product in their eyes. Maybe you have a different opinion.

We also tested “cancel discounts,” showing an offer when someone clicked “cancel subscription.” Some stayed, but fewer than we expected. Plenty of people already know the trick, so they unsubscribe on purpose to see if a deal pops up.

Curious to hear your take. What discount strategies have you tried in your product? What worked, what didn’t and what have you decided to avoid completely?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372226

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

For example, charging based on customer revenue (like ChartMogul). It doesn’t really fit our case, but I just don’t like this model overall.

We also avoided usage-based pricing tied to API calls or account activity.

We never tried monetizing through ads or selling anonymized data — and we never plan to.

And unlike many SaaS companies, we never forced existing customers to accept price increases. I know some businesses calculate churn vs. uplift and decide it’s worth it. We’ve stayed away from that path.

Tiered pricing.

On paper it looked fair. A team with 15 users paid $39 but adding one more jumped it to $119. Inside a tier customers were happy as cost per user dropped. But crossing a tier made them furious. People churned, demanded discounts or sent angry emails. Instead of rewarding growth the model punished it.

Per-user billing.

Finally revenue scaled with customers. But it attracted many solo users and tiny teams. Because Everhour syncs with project tools, even one freelancer could flood the system with hundreds of projects and tasks. They paid almost nothing but created huge load and were the loudest group: angry tweets, refund requests, endless tickets. Larger teams were calmer and more loyal.

To fix this we set a 5-seat minimum.

You could use fewer but still pay for 5. It filtered out freelancers, raised our average check and aligned us with the right customers. Some complained it was too expensive but those who valued the product stayed. Later we added a free plan for up to 5 users without integrations. This gave small teams a way to stick around and got us listed in “Top Free Tools” blogs. It worked more as marketing than monetization.

Flat-fee pricing in our Trello add-on.

$10/month, unlimited users and projects. Out of 30,000+ active users only ~500 paid. Everyone else left the moment we asked for money. The product was too simple for upsells.

Grandfathering.

If someone signed up on old plan they could keep it forever. No forced upgrades, no surprise hikes. Many are still paying today. We tried nudging them to newer plans with extra features and loyalty discounts, but only a small percentage switched. If their plan worked fine, the barrier to paying more was too strong.

Discounts.

Volume disc for large clients worked well and helped close deals. Urgency promos like “Sign up in 5 days and get 20% off” gave a small conv boost and improved retention. Those customers stayed longer because they didn’t want to lose their deal. But it felt unfair to existing users. Some even tried canceling and resubscribing. We eventually stopped.

Billing mechanics lesson.

First we billed per user and deferred prorates to next cycle. Logical in theory, messy in practice. Customers canceled before renewal and we lost money, especially on annuals. Others didn't recognize totals on bank statements. We tried charging prorates immediately when someone was added. That fixed revenue issues but created too many micro payments and invoices. Customers hated multiple charges when swapping users.

Eventually moved to per-seat billing.

Buy seats in advance, use them flexibly and the invoice stays clear. Still not perfect. Some forget to remove empty seats and complain later. But overall it’s far cleaner. Today it’s basically the SaaS standard.

Lessons.

- Tiered pricing looks fair until you cross tiers. Then it makes customers angry. - Solo users overloaded our system while bringing little revenue. - “Micro” plans added support costs without conversions. - Flat-fee pricing attracted 30k+ users but barely any paid. - No minimum seats meant tiny checks and the wrong audience. - Multiple plans added complexity. Most picked the same one anyway. - Upselling grandfathered users failed. If old plans worked, they wouldn’t pay more. - Discount promos helped short term but felt unfair and were abused. - Per-user prorates turned invoicing into a mess and cost us money. - Free plans drove marketing visibility, not upgrades.

This is near the 4,000 char limit here. More details and screenshots: https://medium.com/@citizenblr/lessons-from-10-years-of-saas-pricing-experiments-4ed45f552171

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45298374

Points: 7

# Comments: 1

From everything discussed in the article, there are a 2 major takeaways:

1) You need to avoid chargebacks as much as possible.

2) If a chargeback does happen, the chances of winning are basically zero — unless you can convince the customer to withdraw it.

In the post I mentioned that we build several products. I didn’t want to list them all, because I always feel a bit awkward about self-promotion. My goal with the post was to spark a dialogue, not to advertise.

RE pricing page: yes, we do state that there’s a minimum of 5 seats. But there are no chargebacks here, since we don’t take a card upfront and we don’t bill in a hidden way. In the worst case, if you missed or didn’t read that detail, you can simply decline and not subscribe after the trial. You’ll see the price in Stripe before giving us your card. And if you prefer, you can stay on the free plan for up to 5 ppl.

I’ve shared examples in the article.

As for cancellation, the problem is that even though it’s easy to cancel a subscription, chargebacks usually happen afterwards. It doesn’t matter how simple cancellation is, what matters is that the user first cancel and then still goes and files a chargeback.

But recently I asked for a refund from a very popular project management system, and it was a nightmare, an absolutely terrible experience. After that, I gained a new level of respect for our own support team ))

But this is a slightly different story. With chargebacks, almost every time it was just a customer not wanting to admit fault. What’s strange is that they could have simply written to us and asked for a refund. But I guess they realized they were in the wrong, so instead of contacting us, they went straight to their bank.