The ultimate guide to saas pricing models, strategies & psychological hack

Few things have as much of an impact on income as your costs. Trying to find the proper balance of valuation and income is critical for your SaaS business. To make SaaS pricing simpler to comprehend, we will describe and investigate the three most crucial elements of a successful SaaS pricing approach:

  • pricing models;
  • strategies and techniques;
  • psychological tactics.

Continue reading to discover how to employ these essential instruments to optimize prices, increase revenue, and increase profitability.

SaaS pricing models

To assist you in getting the maximum out of a Saas offering, consider softwarepricing.com. And let’s find out everything about the main SaaS pricing schemes.

Fixed-rate price

It is perhaps the easiest method: you only have one product, one set of characteristics, and one price. It is very comparable to the software licensing framework that existed before the advent of cloud computing, only with the extra advantage of the monthly payment.

Usage-based price

It links directly the price of a Saas offering to its usage: in case you utilize more solutions, your payment increases; utilize less, then the total price will be less as well.

Tiered price

The first two approaches are comparatively rare in popular SaaS enterprises, and this approach is employed by the majority of them. Essentially, it lets businesses provide numerous “packages” with various feature configurations available at different costs.

Price per user

This is possibly the most common method.

This is clarified by simplicity: each customer is charged a set monthly fee; add one more user, and the cost will double; with a third one, the cost per month will increase three times.

Price per active user

Very often a new client may pay for dozens of employees in advance – with little assurance that these staff members will use the technology. This pricing model solves this issue by guaranteeing that Actual billing will only apply to active users.

Freemium

Various SaaS businesses use this model: providing a free product, together with extra-priced packages. It is usually used as a component of a tiered pricing plan: There is an additional free tier with the regularly priced products which is then constrained along specific parameters to induce customers to upgrade at a particular level.

SaaS pricing strategies

Penetration

It is a price reduction approach that lets quickly gain popularity among the target audience by temporarily lowering prices and compensating for this in the future by increasing sales on more favorable terms.

Prestige

It is the practice of keeping costs high to keep a perception of quality, uniqueness, or luxury. Using this strategy, businesses can keep a small clientele of valuable consumers; those who would most likely renounce the product if costs dropped.

Free trial

It is the basis of pricing strategies: by making a product available for free for a short time, you offer quick access to it. Clients can try your product at no financial cost, and they can profit from it throughout the trial. So, there is a great motivation to update it at the end of the trial period.

Captive

Providing a “core” product at a lower cost than anticipated while charging more for supplementary products that are required to maximize the value of the main product is known as this practice.

Skimming

This is a method of charging a new service a large starting price and then gradually decreasing it over time. As soon as it decreases, it attracts different market segments and buyers with various price sensitivity levels.

Psychological pricing hacks

As soon as you select the pricing model strategy, it is still an opportunity to significantly increase your price. This is where psychological pricing techniques are useful.

Price binding

Price is a subjective idea, so when we estimate how much something costs, we use a benchmark to determine its value.

On the price page, pay attention to your most costly item, even though most people do not purchase it. The top-level package will be the “anchor” of the cost for visitors so that the others appear more affordable when compared to them.

Charm pricing

It is a practice of using prices with a “9” ending. The “Left Digit Effect” explains why this psychological pricing method works so well. Anytime we see something worth $500, we fix it on the first “5” and unconsciously use it as a reference. And when we see a $499 product, the same impact of the left digit creates a $400 false point of comparison.

Even-odd pricing

This operates on the same concept of charm pricing: to get costs to the closest “rounded” price level, they are decreased by several dollars. While the charm strategy employs only costs with “9” in the end, here pricing is done with odd numbers.

Pricing for a package of products

Several products are being sold at a single price in this practice. Usually, it provides each composite item cheaper than its individualized cost, but since the package motivates the sale of goods that could not alternatively be purchased, It still might indicate a rise in overall earnings.

High-low prices

This is the practice of switching between “high” and “low” costs: the product is initially offered at a high cost before being discounted or reduced to a cheaper price.

Trial pricing

It is a strategy that involves selling your product for less money for a brief period, typically as part of an introduction deal. Even though the standard free trial is, as its name implies, free, the trial version still costs the customer less than the full version would.