How do I price my first SaaS?

Start from the value

Ask what the problem costs your customer today: hours of work, a tool they pay for, customers they lose. A product that saves someone five hours a month can charge a real fraction of what those hours are worth. Your hosting costs set the floor, not the price.

Don’t start at the bottom of the market

Pricing below every competitor feels safe and usually isn’t. It attracts the customers most likely to leave, leaves no margin for support, and makes the product look like a toy. It’s easier to offer a discount later than to raise a price that anchored everyone low.

How many plans

• One plan is fine at the start: one price, one decision.
• Two plans work once you see two kinds of customers: individuals and small teams, or light and heavy use.
• Three or more before you have many customers usually means you’re guessing where the limits go.

Put the limit where the value is: the thing heavy users need more of (projects, history, seats), not an annoyance that pushes people away.

Yearly billing

Offer it from the start with a clear discount. Yearly customers give you cash up front and a signal that they plan to stay.

How to test it

1. Ask what almost stopped them. Every new customer, one question. If nobody mentions the price, it’s probably too low.
2. Watch the upgrade path. If free users never move up, the limit may be in the wrong place.
3. Change one thing at a time, and compare the months before and after.

Keep early customers on their price when you raise it. It rewards them and keeps the comparison clean.

A price is a guess until people pay it. Treat the first one as a starting point, write down why you chose it, and revisit it after your first twenty or so customers, when you know who is buying and what they use.

With Nordva Launch

Launch reads your Stripe account read-only and shows MRR, average revenue per customer (ARPA), churn and a 12-month value per customer, so you can see what a price change does. It’s on every plan with Stripe connected.