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Comment by blurry | Hacker News Reader

I just spent a good fifteen minutes trying to find out how much Weebly charges for the pro accounts and I still don't know. What is it with websites hiding their pricing? Argh.

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I find it annoying too. Websites should realise that users don't mind them making money -- in fact most users want their web hosts to be financially secure, as that means they'll continue to provide the service -- and that users know that websites need to make money, from advertising, or subscription fees or some other method.

I agree, it's not easy to find. I had to log into my account, and was then offered the choice to upgrade.

FYI, its 3.99 a month.

So weebly also uses a deceptive pricing scheme ... exactly how are 3.99 different than 4?

Does anybody have hard data on market consequences of pricing to round numbers?

And why should one price near $4? If it was in Europe, it would be 4 euro instead?

Why 3.99 and not 3.56, since credit card payments don't care anyway?

In any case, congrats to weebly whose profitability enables this discussion.

Stating $3.99 and then charging $3.99 is anything but deceptive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing

Many of these issues are covered in basic marketing 101. As to how the pricing scheme is deceptive is beyond me.

There are multiple different psychological price theories in use. As mentioned in the article, the .99 pricing scheme is fairly prevalent, although some retailers use a .00 pricing scheme to reinforce quality. Walmart has used a somewhat random pricing scheme (.32, .67, .18, etc) to try to have consumers come to the conclusion that the only rationale behind the price is that Walmart shaved every possible penny it could.

Thanks for sharing. The random pricing scheme reads most evil of all. Perhaps a conclusion is that there is no such thing as a naked price--all pricing schemes have psychological load, whether intended or not, because the consumer will add it.

Why is random pricing evil?

Because of the pretension of being real--as in, adjusted to the real price--when they are not.

Sorry, I'm still not following (I could very easily be missing something so I apologize if this is the case). As long as the buyer isn't being forced to buy, how can variable prices be evil?

3.99$ might be deceptive, but it's deceptive in a very standard way that everyone expects and understands.

We've shied away from displaying $$ signs on our front page, as the Weebly service is very much free -- we don't want to create a perception on the user's part that they have to pay to use the service.

On the other hand, most users run into our "upgrade" form organically, when they try to use a Pro feature, and are offered the ability to upgrade -- this is a very logical point for the user, when there is already some form of demand.

Understandable, but perhaps you could include it in your FAQs?

How much, the number one FAQ the world over for the last 5,000 years :)

Thanks, so using napkin calculation...

(1,000,000 users) x ("well over 1% conversion", we'll call it 4% to be generous) = 40,000 customers x $4 = $160,000 in revenue.

They have 6 people in the team, so allowing modest salary of $50,000 each = $300,000.

So, they must make the bulk of thier money by Adwords (11,000,000 uniques will generate $$$) as I assume the others services offered are not generating much cash yet.

Anyway, it is still a good and sustainable model and well done to them for turning a profit, something so many big(ger) name startups have yet to do.

EDIT: $160,000 x 12 months = $1,920,000. Also, allowing conversion rate of 2% rather than generous 4% = $960,000.

That $160,000 would be monthly, as I understand it. But id give 1.5% for "well over 1%" otherwise they might say, almost 5% :)

Doh! For some reason I thought it was $4 per year. Must learn to read properly.

No idea regarding the accuracy of your calculations, but when you're talking conversion rates for a million users, 1.5% or 2% or heck, 1.1%, could be considered "well over" 1%.

Yes, this breaks a deal for me. If I ever consider to subscribe to a service like this, I need to know beforehand which features I get for free, and which I need to pay for and how much.

The model is good, but I really like to know beforehand what each option includes, similarly to choosing webhosting package.

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