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Comment by seanwilson | Hacker News Reader

Have you thought about increasing your prices by a lot? I'm not the target market but $1 per month for the cheapest plan and $5 per month for the most expensive one sounds insanely cheap to me.

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Seconded. Just make sure you increase them for new customers but not existing ones. You can even try A/B testing price levels and the likes!

Price elasticity experiments are the lowest hanging fruits for optimizing revenue!

We found doing it per country had a huge impact on rest-of-world LTVs.

Please bear in mind that there is a regulation in EU that prices of the same product should not differ based on the country you are coming from (source: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treat..., "Price discrimination is not allowed" section).

Which presumably affects and references only EU country pricing, so you need one 'EU price', which can be different from non-EU countries?

I also wonder what the implementation has been (but not for much longer) without a single currency. I wasn't aware of this rule, and as a consumer have certainly seen variation in EUR/GBP rates (across different things that have the same EUR price say but not GBP).

Must be challenging for big product sellers as opposed to service providers too, Amazon (shop) for example.

The rule is against discriminating based on country of origin, not currency. While an EU citizen from a non-Euro country might prefer paying in their local currency, they should be able to choose to pay in Euros and get the same price as everyone else.

I don't understand, are you saying it only applies to Euros?

I assumed (and understood from the link) that it applies to all EU member states, which presently includes the UK. Since the exchange rate fluctuates, there must be some margin of error allowed, otherwise it's almost impossible (and certainly more expensive) to implement with more than one currency.

As I understand them, if you accept Euros at all then you also have to accept them from customers in countries outside the Euro zone such as the UK. So if you try to discriminate against Brits by charging more in GBP than in EUR, they can bypass it by exchanging the money themselves.

does this apply to companies not based in the EU? I don't see how they could possibly enforce this.

Via the payment processor.

You can also have constant regular price and just give different discounts.

In Poland almost everything is 1/3 of the price compared to the rest of the EU for the same "stuff", arguably most have Polish branding but there are common products(Nestle, Coca Cola, etc) that are significantly cheaper.

That's just different shops having different prices. The price discrimination that is banned would be like a shop near a border charging different prices to locals and border shoppers.

Disclaim: I'm American and I'm mostly guessing here,

I know that sometimes companies create multiple SKUs of products to get around certain restrictions. For example, if the Coca-Cola in Poland is only sold in Poland, and is different from what's sold in France (let's pretend your flag is on the can) - then they're technically "different products" and don't have to follow the same regulations.

I know the WD easy stores sold at best buy are best buy specific so that they don't have to price match them with competitors, even though what the competitors sell have identical internals.

Oh yes,the famous brand products with less good stuff in them. Essentially,there are 3 unofficial markets in Europe: local market, western countries and the rest... Obviously the rest get it worse. European commission were investigating this couple of years ago,not sure where they are with it now. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2018/60884...

What? Electronics, cars too?

Europe is truly unique in this regard. For instance, my father in law bought a Lithuanian made furnice from a retailer in Latvia because it was cheaper than if he would have bought in Lithuania. Car reimport exist as well,where a German would buy a car made in Germany from a Lithuanian dealer and transport it back to Germany,because it's cheaper. There are some companies that import medication, repackage and sell abroad in markets where the same medication costs more( this one is an old one,not sure if it's still the case)

Interesting, will definitely reconsider. Thanks!

I've definitely considered it, and I use some custom plans for users who exceed the limits of the Pro Plus plan, but I think current prices are alright.

Also, keep in mind that these prices apply on yearly plans, and most paid users use monthly pricing, where prices range from $2 to $8.

I like that you've decided that you're charging a fair price. While you certainly might make more money by raising the prices, you'll limit your market significantly.

I know that I use a TV related site (one of the ones for tracking shows), and as much as I'd be happy to pay them $12/year, their cheapest plan is 3 times as much, and I just don't see them as providing that much value to me.

I like your current prices. When I consider subscribing to something (rarely) I have to weigh something like a $10 / month cost heavily because I can only have a few of those total. But if the service is significantly lower ($1, $2.50 in your case) it's a no brainer. $5 would be in the middle somewhere as definitely easier to accept than $10.

It seems obvious that as a user I would like low prices, but at the risk of being slightly repetitive, what's apparently not obvious to many subscription service providers is that I consider the total price of all my subscriptions, not just the price of their one service.

> But if the service is significantly lower ($1, $2.50 in your case) it's a no brainer.

I think this rational is okay for selling things like a coffee or a mobile game but not for a service. If you're thinking of pricing this low, you really have to start targeting users that value what you're selling more or expand the product to solve more valuable pain points. If you've got a niche product, you're unlikely to sell a big enough volume to earn a living selling it cheap as well.

You'll lose the "no-brainer because it's so cheap" market by increasing prices but those customers aren't necessarily the customers you want.

Why aren’t those the customers you want?

Each additional customer costs 0 more (since its software), and it’s a side project, so maximizing revenue isn’t necessarily the OP’s chief objective. He made a cool thing, and people like it!

More customers means more support requests (especially if it's a cloud service) and customers that only get the product because it's cheap tend to be the noisiest and most unreasonable. The post mentions paying the rent with the earnings so I'm assuming more revenue is wanted too.

>>> Why aren’t those the customers you want?

Agree with this - they may be the long tail.

So long as overheads/support costs are low, having a cheap entry point has to be a good idea, if there's volume to be had. Especially if you have higher-cost options too for up-selling.

I agree with everything you said here. Except I'd emphasize the trick is to keep it still being a "no-brainer because it's so cheap" decision even at higher prices, by adding more value to the service as he goes (as you also said). Not necessarily with the same users, to be sure.

I actually like the pricing model. Because it is very cheap for the user and the creator can make a lots of money by scaling. I am a strong oponnent of high prices for SaaS for so many reasons. First, it discriminates citizens of poorer countries. Secondly, a lots of SaaS make this model that aims to heavy users only. Users who can spend a lots of more money as a single person. So there are great services, but a lots of occasional users just cant use it (and pay).

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