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independence5 unconnected · 3 more authors in those circles
standing

contested · 8 claims against 3

applies to

b2b, no audience needed

assumes $100 and up

mixed results

confidence

high

evidence

12 claims · 10 articles · 4 receipts

window

2014-11-05 → 2026-05-21

5 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Pick the value metric and let the bill follow it

Tying the price to something that grows with the customer, seats, subscribers, surveys or resolutions, lets one plan ladder stretch across an order of magnitude while small buyers still afford the entry. Expect your first guess at the metric to be wrong for part of the base and segment before repricing. There is a real counterweight from developer tools: a metered bill makes heavy users ration themselves, so a flat plan at a high price can cost the customer less and get the product used more.

What both sides agree on

  • Expect your first guess at the value metric to be wrong for part of your base, and segment before you re-price.

Where this splits

Barry, Riley and Cohen scale the bill with measured usage, while Steinberger argues metering makes heavy users ration themselves and a high flat price serves both sides better.

  1. side 01 · 8 claims

    Scale the bill with measured usage, seats or results

    Alex Kistenev · Dru Riley · Jason Cohen · Nathan Barry · Paul Jarvis · Tyler Tringas

    1. 1Attach price to a usage metric so heavy users pay for the value they get without pricing out small ones.
    2. 2A plan ladder can differ on nothing but usage volume and still stretch across an order of magnitude in price, if the data you produce is valuable enough.
    3. 3Give every plan the same feature set and let volume be the only thing the price scales with.
    4. 4Price by seat so your revenue rises as the customer's team grows, instead of holding one flat fee whatever they do with it.
    5. 5Per seat pricing at a few dollars a head scales into large organisations without a sales team.

  2. side 02 · 3 claims

    Charge one high flat price instead of metering

    Peter Steinberger

    1. 1A metered bill makes heavy users ration themselves, so a flat plan at a high price can both cost the customer less and get them using the product more.
    2. 2Sell the everyday tier as one flat unit per action regardless of how heavy the action is, and keep true metering for the expensive edge case only.
    3. 3Give your heaviest consumption customers a named discount programme so the ones who outgrow the top plan have somewhere to go instead of leaving.

What it returned

  • 3,000

    A ConvertKit customer at 3,000 subscribers pays $49 a month while one at 100,000 pays $679

  • $49

    Promoter charged $49 to $499 a month with the only difference being a monthly survey cap rising from 500 to 30,000, giving it the highest revenue per user on the list at $97; the author admits he would have priced it far lower

  • 50

    Any tier gets as many as 50 dashboards, uncapped emailed reports and uncapped uptime checks; only the page view allowance changes with price.

  • $20

    Jestor bills separately for builders and users, Fibery reaches $20 per user each month, AppSheet reaches $10 per user each month.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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More in pricing

all pricing plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

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