
Frameworks, core principles and top case studies for SaaS pricing, learnt and refined over 28+ years of SaaS-monetization experience.
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Join companies like Zoom, DocuSign, and Twilio using our systematic pricing approach to increase revenue by 12-40% year-over-year.
In today's competitive SaaS landscape, finding the optimal pricing strategy can directly impact your company's growth trajectory and profitability. Yet many organizations struggle with ad-hoc pricing decisions rather than taking a methodical, evidence-based approach through experimentation. According to a 2023 OpenView Partners report, companies with formal pricing experimentation processes achieve 15% higher revenue growth compared to those without such capabilities.
Let's explore how you can build robust pricing experimentation capabilities that scale with your business and create sustainable competitive advantage.
Pricing is perhaps your most powerful lever for improving unit economics, yet it remains one of the most underutilized areas for testing and optimization. Research from Price Intelligently shows that a 1% improvement in pricing can yield an 11% increase in operating profit—far outpacing the impact of comparable improvements in acquisition cost or retention.
However, pricing changes carry risk. Without a systematic experimental design framework, you might:
Building pricing experimentation capabilities requires several foundational elements:
Your testing infrastructure must reliably:
Many SaaS companies leverage purpose-built experimentation platforms like Split.io, LaunchDarkly, or Optimizely to manage their pricing tests, rather than building custom solutions. According to Gartner, companies with dedicated testing tools run 3-5x more experiments annually than those using homegrown systems.
Each pricing experiment should follow a structured process:
Patrick Campbell, CEO of ProfitWell, recommends: "Your experimental design should be documented in advance and approved by stakeholders to avoid the temptation to end tests early or move goalposts when initial results come in."
Successful pricing experimentation requires collaboration between:
This cross-functional approach ensures all aspects of pricing changes are considered, from technical implementation to customer experience.
Your measurement framework should capture both direct and indirect impacts:
According to Elena Verna, former growth leader at SurveyMonkey and Miro: "The key to successful pricing experimentation is measuring not just what happens immediately, but tracking cohort behavior over time to understand the true impact."
Once you've established the foundational elements, focus on scaling your capabilities:
Develop a system that classifies experiments by:
This allows you to run appropriate experiments at different stages of development—from low-risk explorations with small sample sizes to comprehensive pricing model changes.
Document all experiments with:
This creates institutional knowledge that compounds over time, preventing repeated mistakes and accelerating future tests.
Rather than viewing pricing experimentation as a series of discrete projects, develop continuous testing systems that:
Companies like Atlassian have built these capabilities to continuously optimize their pricing across their extensive product portfolio, enabling them to make data-driven adjustments as market conditions change.
As your experimentation capabilities mature, progress from broad tests to increasingly granular segmentation:
This segmentation approach allows for more personalized pricing that captures value appropriately across different customer types.
As you build these capabilities, prepare for these common obstacles:
Many billing systems weren't designed for complex experimentation. Consider:
Finding the balance between:
HubSpot addresses this by running smaller, sequential tests rather than waiting for massive samples, then validating with broader rollouts.
Pricing experiments can create customer confusion or frustration. Mitigate through:
To begin building pricing experimentation capabilities:
Days 1-30: Assessment and Foundation
Days 31-60: First Experiments
Days 61-90: Scale and Systematize
Building pricing experimentation capabilities at scale represents one of the highest-leverage investments a SaaS business can make. By establishing robust testing infrastructure, implementing sound experimental design practices, and creating systems that allow for continuous learning, you can transform pricing from an occasional strategic decision into an ongoing competitive advantage.
Remember that the most successful companies don't view pricing experimentation as a project but as a permanent capability—one that becomes increasingly valuable as markets evolve, competition intensifies, and customer needs change.
The question isn't whether you can afford to build these capabilities, but whether you can afford not to in today's data-driven SaaS environment.
Join companies like Zoom, DocuSign, and Twilio using our systematic pricing approach to increase revenue by 12-40% year-over-year.