11 Tips for a Pricing Page from 10 SaaS Rockstars
Pricing page is one of the most important pages of your SaaS website. That’s the place where people decide if they want to use (and pay for) your service or not.
You’d better build it in the best way possible so your customers won’t even think about leaving your site, without signing up for your product.
Always show the price
The most important thing. And seriously – not as obvious as it sounds. Not everyone remembers about that.
Build your pricing page. Show your customers how much they need to pay for using your services.
Most of us (entrepreneurs) are busy. We don’t want to contact you and ask about the prices. We want to know how much we need to pay for your service. And we want to know it now. Not tomorrow. Not today, at 5pm. We don’t want to write an email or call you to describe what we do and how we want to use your SaaS product. We want to know what’s your price, so that we can decide if it’s fine for us or not.
If I need anything more, if I need something tailored to my needs – I will contact you. But for now – I just want to know what the standard price is. 99% of your customers won’t need anything more than just a standard package.
Price and currency
I want to know what the price is and in what currency. If I need to pay in some foreign currency – I need to know that. If I have a chance to pay in some other currency (e.g. in EUR, not USD), I want to know that.
Not everyone is from the US. Not everyone wants to pay in US dollars. Show the price, show the currency and give people the chance to pay in various currencies, so they know how much you are going to charge them (if you are going to charge someone from Europe in USD, then they will be charged by their bank for exchanging the currency).
What’s in the package?
Most of the SaaS businesses are selling their services in packages. Packages of functionalities (e.g. number of projects, users, disk space) and additional services (e.g. priority support). Write down everything that’s included in each of your packages and publish this information here.
Period of time
I need to pay $20. Sure, fine. But for what? For a month, a day, a year? Maybe that’s a price for a one-time usage or some kind of life-time license? Don’t forget to inform what the price is for. If that’s per month (as in most SaaS services) – inform your customers about that here.
Bigger plans
In most cases… if I want to charge users for using my service for some short period of time (e.g. for a month), there is a chance that I will offer the same product for a longer period of time with a discount. Tell about that here.
For instance… $20 per month, but if you want to pay annually, that would be $200. So that’s $40 less than in the monthly-based plan.
Contract or no-contract plan
Some of the SaaS businesses want to charge some amount for a period of time (e.g. for a month), but only if you sign a contract for some longer period of time (e.g. a year). So even if you are charged on monthly basis, you will need to pay month by month, for a whole year. No matter if you’re using the service, or not.
Want to have contracts in your SaaS? Sure, it’s not something bad. But don’t forget to inform about that on your pricing page.
Trial period
You have something like a trial in your business? When you offer unlimited access to your service for some short period of time? Tell about that here. No matter if it’s 7 days, 14 days or a month. It’s worth knowing how long I can use your service for free before I need to pay for it.
And what’s important as well… inform your users when you’re asking for credit card details. Is it after the trial period or during the registration process. It’s worth knowing that too.
What type of payment methods do you accept?
If you’re selling around the globe – it’s a good idea to offer more than just Visa or MasterCard cards. If you offer more ways to pay – list the payment methods you accept.
Refund policy
No matter if you offer 30-day money-back guarantee or no refunds at all. Tell your users how it works in your SaaS. Or at least link to your Terms of Service page, where users can find more information about that.
Recommend a plan
Inform your customers which plan is best for whom. Which one is the most popular one (you can highlight this plan). And which one is suited for whom (e.g. Personal plan could be for a personal use, Premium plan could be for wanna-be entrepreneurs and Business plan could be for a growing business).
Calculate fees
If you want to offer a service, where price is based on the usage… it’s advisable to offer some kind of automatic calculation tool on your site. If you are offering email marketing platform (where you need to pay for the number of emails sent per month) or a hosting service (where you pay for storage or unique users) – I’d suggest introducing the possibility to check how much the customers would need to pay for what they currently have or what they predict to have in a near future.
Let’s have a look how best SaaS businesses designed their pricing pages
MailChimp
Basecamp
GetResponse
Salesforce
Base
Buffer
Groove
Zendesk
FreshBooks
KISSmetrics
That’s the next post of Build a great global SaaS business series – the brand new blog post series on Across the Board. Want to know more? We will publish much much more in the near future. Subscribe to our newsletter or hashtag #GlobalSaaS on Twitter and be first to know.
Have some additional questions? Or maybe an idea for a next blog post about SaaS businesses? Don’t hesitate to tell us about that. On Twitter (remember about #GlobalSaaS in your tweet) or in comments below.
