Ask HN: Product Pricing | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Product Pricing

2 pointsvital1012 comments

Hello HN,

My side project (https://kernl.us) has been in a long period of alpha (may-oct) followed by a period of beta (oct-now). During that time I've worked out most of the kinks and got a bunch of active users. The next step in my launch process is to set and implement pricing, which is where I need some help.

For developer tools (think online tools like GitHub, CircleCI, CodeShip, etc), is there a preference for cost structure? I think there are a few ways of pricing.

- Tiered cost structure. (Freelance, agency, enterprise, etc) - Pay as you go. (essentially fixed price per plugin/theme hosted on Kernl)

Any direction in how you decided your startups pricing structure would be great. Books, articles, twitter feeds of thought-leaderss, or examples would also be welcome.

Thanks!

Services are almost always structured as subscriptions. In your case, there's a big question of whether you should use a flat price or charge as a multiple of the products that are being updated with your service.

Unfortunately pricing is really challenging and complicated, and the only way to get it right is to survey and A/B test.

One thing you need to know is this: what's the average number of products a developer creates? If the answer is 1.5, then you wouldn't want to do a "first product updates free" model. But if the answer is 5+, then you have nothing to lose by letting them test out your service with one product before adding the rest. (But then they could also be really shady and use multiple email addresses, so you'd have to verify identity somehow.)

If you're surveying users, you should also ask what they'd be willing to pay. There are probably best practices for how to ask that question, and I don't feel qualified to tell you what I think.

Thanks for the reply. You make good points. I imagine I'll end up doing a lot of A/B testing on pricing to see what sticks the best.

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