SaaS Pricing

How to Use Pricing to Maximize Value for Your Private Equity PortCo

May 2, 2025

Private equity team applying Monetizely’s AI pricing model to boost SaaS portfolio company value in 2025

Pricing is one of the most powerful yet underutilized levers for boosting a portfolio company’s enterprise value. In private equity roll-ups and post-merger integrations, teams often focus on cost cuts, sales reports, and product roadmaps, while pricing strategy gets overlooked. This oversight can be costly. In today’s efficient-growth era, investors are actually pushing pricing “to the top of the agenda” as a critical driver of revenue and margin. If you’re a PE professional or operating partner managing SaaS/tech-enabled PortCos, it’s time to give pricing the attention it deserves as a value-creation tool.

In this blog post, we’ll cover: why pricing is frequently neglected during PE roll-ups (and the risks that creates), how to spot pricing structure gaps after an acquisition, tactical steps to harmonize pricing across a fragmented portfolio, real examples of value unlocked via pricing changes (packaging, metrics, operations), and why Monetizely’s pragmatic 5-step pricing approach can deliver faster ROI than traditional consultants. Let’s dive in.

The Overlooked Lever in PE M&A: Why Pricing Often Gets Ignored

Despite its direct impact on both top and bottom line, pricing is frequently sidelined during mergers and roll-ups. A 2023 EY study found that while pricing is crucial in today’s inflationary, high-cost environment, only 30% of global CEOs viewed it as a near-term strategic priority.

This disconnect is especially stark in private equity integrations. Traditional PE playbooks prioritize cost synergies, cutting headcount, consolidating vendors, while assuming pricing will “sort itself out” later. But this delay can undercut the very investment thesis of the deal.

Why does pricing get ignored?

Fear of disruption: Acquirers hesitate to “rock the boat” and delay pricing changes to avoid destabilizing operations.
Lack of ownership: Pricing often falls into a no-man’s land between Sales, Product, and Finance, with no single function driving it.
Legacy inertia: Management may stick with outdated pricing models simply because they’ve “worked so far.”

Yet the upside is real. According to EY-Parthenon, PE firms now hold companies assets longer and must create more value within the hold period, and “maximizing pricing opportunities is a significant and relatively inexpensive way to do so.”

What happens when pricing is ignored?

Inconsistent value messaging: Merged entities often inherit fragmented pricing logic, sending mixed signals to customers.
Erosion of pricing power: If multiple products or business units retain different models, customers gravitate to the lowest-priced option, undermining premium products and cannibalizing revenue.
Customer arbitrage: Sophisticated buyers exploit loopholes, buying a cheaper SKU and getting other features bundled in, leading to margin leakage.

The opportunity cost is real:

Lost quick wins: Unlike engineering-intensive product integrations or morale-sensitive layoffs, pricing improvements can deliver near-instant EBITDA gains.
High leverage: A 1% price increase can yield 8-11% growth in profits, compounding exit value.
Missed synergies: Strategic tweaks in packaging or pricing structure can unlock ARR boosts without needing major organizational change.

Bottom line: Pricing should move from the back burner to center stage in any PE value creation plan. The next step is figuring out where to start, by identifying the gaps and quirks in your PortCo’s current pricing setup.

Finding Pricing Gaps Post-Acquisition: What to Look For

After an acquisition (or when reviewing a new portfolio company), a pricing audit is essential. The goal is to pinpoint misalignments or “pricing structure gaps” that, if fixed, could unlock growth or prevent revenue leakage. Here’s what to examine:

1. Customer Segments & Willingness-to-Pay

Does the company charge different customer segments appropriately? Often in roll-ups, one business was targeting enterprise clients at premium prices while another sold to SMBs at a fraction of the cost. Post-merger, these segment-price mismatches stick out. Identify who the high-value customers are and whether they’re paying commensurate with value. If not, there’s an opportunity to re-segment and reprice. (This aligns with Step 1 of Monetizely’s framework, Segmentation, ensuring your pricing strategy starts with a clear map of customer segments and needs.)

2. Packaging and Tier Structure

Review the product packages, bundles, or editions on offer. Are features and modules packaged in a logical way, or are there overlaps and inconsistencies between the merged offerings? For example, one SaaS product might include advanced analytics in its base package, while another charges extra for a similar module. Such inconsistencies confuse customers and sales. Look for chances to rationalize packages – perhaps creating a unified tier structure across products (e.g. “Standard/Pro/Enterprise” tiers that span the suite) or bundling complementary products together. Packaging gaps are common; many companies have too many SKUs or legacy bundles that don’t reflect today’s usage. Simplifying and harmonizing packages can immediately clarify value and often justify a price update.

3. Pricing Metrics & Model

Examine what units or usage the company charges for – e.g. per user, per API call, per transaction, flat subscription, etc. Is the pricing metric aligned with the customer’s value? If the acquired product charges per seat but customers actually derive value from usage volume (or vice versa), that’s a misaligned metric. Such misalignment was exactly the issue at New Relic: they charged per server/host, which discouraged customers from fully using the product, hurting adoption. Post-acquisition is a great time to ask: Is there a better pricing model here? Many SaaS companies in recent years have shifted to usage-based or hybrid models, in fact 60%+ of SaaS companies now employ some form of usage-based pricing, up from 45% in 2021. If your PortCo is still on an outdated model (e.g. pure seat licenses or one-size-fits-all pricing), consider modernizing it. A new pricing metric (like a consumption-based model) can unlock expansion revenue and better align price with value delivered.

4. Rate Levels (Actual Price Points)

Beyond structure, are the price points too low or too high relative to value and market? It’s common to find an acquired company hasn’t revisited its price in years – perhaps underpricing to drive early growth or due to fear of churn. If they have enterprise customers gaining massive value for peanuts, that’s upside on the table. Conversely, maybe one product has high churn because its price is out of step with ROI. Benchmark the prices against peers and use customer feedback to gauge value. In 2023, leading SaaS firms became very proactive here: 94% of B2B SaaS companies now adjust pricing or packaging at least annually, and ~40% do so quarterly to keep up with the market.

If your PortCo hasn’t touched pricing in a long time, it’s likely ripe for an update. Even a targeted increase (with proper communication) can have outsized impact on ARR and company valuation.

5. Discounting and Deal Policies

Investigate how custom deals were handled historically. Did the sales team frequently give 30-50% discounts to close deals? Are there grandfathered customers on old plans at bargain rates? These are “leaks” in your monetization. Post-acquisition, align on a stricter discount policy or establish a deal desk (a formal pricing approval process) if one doesn’t exist. This operational fix (Step 5 in Monetizely’s model: Pricing Operations & Deal Desk) can recover margin by curbing ad-hoc discounting. We’ve seen clients cut average discount rates by double digits simply by enforcing new approval guardrails and arming sales with better value justification. The result: higher realized prices with minimal revenue loss.

Performing this pricing health-check early post-close gives you a roadmap of improvements. In our experience, the first 100 days post-merger is an ideal window to tackle pricing, you’re in the “honeymoon” period where customers and employees expect changes, and you can set a fresh baseline. Don’t wait until a year in when misaligned pricing has already hurt your growth synergy; find the gaps now and plan improvements.

Harmonizing Pricing Across a Fragmented Portfolio

If your PE firm has multiple software portfolio companies or you’re integrating several acquisitions into one platform, you face an added challenge: harmonizing pricing logic across a fragmented suite. The objective here isn’t necessarily to have one identical price list for all products, but to ensure a coherent strategy so that the portfolio’s pricing as a whole makes sense, to customers, to sales teams, and to investors.

Here are tactical steps to bring consistency and unlock value across the portfolio:

1. Establish a Unified Pricing Vision

First, get leadership alignment that pricing will be value-based and strategic (not just cost-plus or inherited blindly). For example, if you decide as a portfolio principle to charge based on customer value metrics (a practice common among the best SaaS firms), that philosophy should guide each product’s model.

It doesn’t mean every company uses the same metric, but each uses a metric that truly correlates with value delivered. Communicate a clear monetization vision to all PortCos (e.g. “We monetize on outcomes, not inputs”) so that pricing transformations have a North Star.

2. Create a Portfolio Pricing Team or Committee

Don’t leave pricing siloed in each company. Form a small cross-portfolio pricing task force or center of excellence. This can include a Monetizely pricing advisor or internal pricing lead plus representatives from each business. Their mandate: share data, benchmark each PortCo’s pricing against best practices, and coordinate changes.

According to a 2023 report, having a designated owner or committee for pricing is a key enabler for action. This group ensures pricing doesn’t fall through the cracks and that each portfolio company is executing updates in a complementary way, rather than in conflict.

3. Align Value Metrics and Models (Where Possible)

Compare the pricing models of your different products. If one is subscription and another is usage-based, consider how they will coexist in front of customers. You may not make everything usage-based, but you might, for instance, introduce a usage element to a traditionally flat-fee product so that all products have a scalable component. Or perhaps you standardize on a per-user model across the suite for simplicity. One approach is to pick a primary metric for the core offering and use add-ons for extras.

For example, a portfolio company that sells security software acquired a reporting tool; the unified plan now charges per core user, with an add-on fee per report generated (tying the smaller product’s pricing to the main product’s user count). This kind of alignment makes bundling easier and prevents one product from undercutting another. The key is to ensure no product’s pricing radically undermines the others’.

If Product A is unlimited usage for $100 and Product B is usage-priced and could cost $500 for heavy use, guess which one the customer will favor? Harmonize the structure to avoid such arbitrage.

4. Standardize Packaging and Tiering

Introduce a consistent packaging framework across the portfolio. For instance, if you own three SaaS tools that you often sell together, define matching tiers (Basic/Pro/Enterprise) with coordinated value propositions. Each product might have different features, but a customer should roughly understand that a “Pro” version is the mid-tier with advanced features for that product. This not only makes cross-selling easier (“bundle all Enterprise tiers and get a platform discount”), it also sets the stage for a potential unified platform offering.

Post-acquisition, many PE-backed companies choose to bundle products as a suite for a higher ACV. To do that effectively, the packaging of each must be compatible. One tactical step is to harmonize usage bands or limits – e.g., if you have usage limits in each tier, make sure an Enterprise tier of one product isn’t inexplicably less permissive than Enterprise of another. Customers notice these things. Rationalize the SKUs and trim redundant ones. A cohesive packaging structure across businesses will drive clarity in value communication.

5. Level-Set Price Points and Value Metrics

Once structure is set, re-evaluate the actual price points side by side. You may decide to upmarket one product’s pricing to match its new parent brand’s premium, or conversely, to lower a price to drive adoption and upsell of another product.

For example, if the acquirer’s brand has greater recognition and pricing power, you might migrate the acquired product’s customers to the acquirer’s (higher) price over time. One question to resolve early: do we charge existing customers the acquirer’s price or honor the acquiree’s price? Often the answer is to grandfather prices initially but align new customer pricing to the higher standard.

Also leverage the stronger brand to justify pricing – if the combined company is now a market leader, your pricing can reflect that credibility (with the appropriate value story to back it up). The goal is not to gouge customers, but to ensure you’re capturing fair value across the board, and that similar value is priced similarly. No portfolio company should be an outlier where its value metric or price level drastically undercuts the others.

6. Integrate Pricing Operations

Harmonizing pricing isn’t just about lists and numbers, it’s operational. Ensure your systems (billing, CRM, CPQ) can handle the new pricing structures, especially for cross-product sales. It may make sense to unify the billing platform or at least the quoting tools so that a sales rep can easily configure a deal involving multiple products with the approved pricing logic.

Implement a “deal desk” function either at the portfolio level or within each company with common guidelines. This way, if a customer is negotiating a suite deal, there’s a single authority to approve any non-standard pricing, ensuring one product isn’t discounted in a vacuum.

By streamlining pricing ops and policies, you prevent chaos like one business unit offering an unsanctioned discount that undermines another’s value. Consistency here means faster deals and less friction in integration. (Nothing frustrates a new sales team more than not knowing how to sell the sister company’s product because the pricing is convoluted or approvals take ages.)

7. Train and Communicate

Finally, bring everyone up to speed. Sales enablement is crucial, educating each PortCo’s sales team on the unified pricing approach, the value rationale behind it, and how to sell with confidence under the new model. When reps understand why pricing was adjusted and how it benefits customers (and their commissions), they’ll execute far better.

Similarly, communicate to existing customers with transparency. If you’re harmonizing pricing, some customers might eventually see changes (e.g. a new packaging or a price increase after grandfathering expires). Proactively explain the added value they’ll get, and consider phasing changes in with plenty of notice. A well-handled repricing, paired with clear value communication, can actually increase customer trust rather than spark churn.

By following these steps, you turn a hodgepodge of pricing approaches into a strategic, portfolio-wide monetization system. Harmonization eliminates internal confusion and sets the stage for revenue synergies: you can confidently bundle products, upsell across the portfolio, and present a consistent value story to the market. Instead of each company pricing in a vacuum, you’ll have a coordinated engine to drive ARR and margin expansion across the board.

Why Real Results Matter to PE Operators

Private equity operating partners aren’t interested in theories, they want tangible results. Their mandate is clear: increase portfolio company value within a short holding period. That’s why pricing is becoming a key lever in PE playbooks. Many firms now conduct formal pricing audits to identify quick wins across revenue, retention, and profitability. But nothing beats real proof. If you can show that smart pricing moves lifted net revenue retention (NRR), boosted annual contract value (ACV), or reduced churn, you’ll earn their attention.

Below, we walk through several examples where smart pricing changes delivered measurable boosts to revenue, retention, and company value. Each illustrates why the change worked and the outcomes it drove – exactly the kind of evidence a PE operating partner can get behind.

Simplifying Packaging Boosts Retention and Growth

One B2B SaaS in video conferencing ($4B+ in valuation) discovered that years of rapid product expansion had bloated its pricing structure. Dozens of add-ons and SKUs confused customers and dampened sales. The company undertook a packaging overhaul, bundling core features, consolidating SKUs, and streamlining tiers based on customer research.

The impact was immediate: churn dropped by 22% and new customer count jumped 37% after the simplification. Why was this so effective? By making it easier for customers to understand value and buy the right package, the company removed friction from the sales process.

Prospects could say “yes” faster, and existing users weren’t overwhelmed by complexity. For a PE owner, those results translate to higher retention (protecting the base revenue) and accelerated growth – critical drivers of EBITDA and exit multiples.

Restructuring Tiers Lifts Average Deal Size

In another case, a ~$30M ARR e-commerce SaaS found its rigid, one-size-fits-all pricing tiers were leaving money on the table. The tiers had steep step-ups that discouraged customers from upgrading, and sales reps were either discounting around the model or losing deals. The company redesigned its pricing model with more flexible packages and introduced an internal deal desk tool for quote guidance.

The outcome was a 15–30% increase in average selling price per deal (i.e. higher ACV) and 100% sales team compliance with the new pricing structure. In practice, this meant every rep was now selling value instead of apologizing for pricing. The key to success was aligning the pricing increments with customer value – allowing customers to expand usage gradually without sudden price shocks, and giving sales the confidence to hold the line.

For PE operators, the lesson is that operational pricing tweaks (like better discount governance and sales enablement) can directly boost deal economics. Higher ACV and disciplined discounting flow straight to revenue and margin improvement.

Hybrid Usage Pricing Defends Revenue and Spurs Expansion

Pricing model changes can be daunting, especially when moving to usage-based pricing, which often causes short-term revenue uncertainty. A contact-center software provider (post-IPO, now PE-backed) faced this when battling a large competitor offering usage-based plans. The company needed to shift from pure subscription to a hybrid model to stay competitive. Their solution was to introduce usage-based pricing for voice and messaging with a platform fee floor to protect recurring revenue.

This approach mitigated the feared 50% revenue shortfall from usage-based pricing by ensuring every customer still paid a baseline subscription. Once launched, the new model unlocked expansion opportunities, customers could increase usage without hitting a wall of overage fees, and new use cases (previously out of reach under the old model) drove additional volume. In essence, the company made pricing a win-win: customers only paid for what they used, and the vendor kept a safety net of committed revenue.

Over time, this kind of model drives superior expansion economics; usage-led SaaS firms average 137% net dollar retention, meaning they grow within existing accounts at a remarkable rate. For PE owners, that signals a highly efficient growth engine. By thoughtfully implementing a usage-based model (instead of jumping in blindly), this company stayed competitive against a tech giant and set the stage for higher NRR, all without sacrificing its current revenue base.

Proactive Repricing Cuts Churn in a Tough Market

Not every pricing play is about raising prices, sometimes lowering or restructuring prices for certain customers creates value in the long run. A timely example comes from Pushpay, a vertical SaaS platform, which in 2023 was navigating competitive pressure in a saturated market of church management software. Rather than let price-sensitive customers quietly churn to a rival, Pushpay took a proactive retention strategy: identify at-risk customers and offer them tailored price reductions in exchange for longer-term commitments.

This targeted repricing was communicated as a reward for loyalty (framed positively, not as a desperation move). The result? Churn dropped sharply – a 20% decrease in annual churn rate, and customer satisfaction scores rose in tandem. The pricing change was effective because it turned pricing into a tool for customer success rather than just revenue extraction. By giving a bit of margin back to the customer, the company preserved a lot more in lifetime value. For a PE stakeholder, reducing churn directly boosts NRR and stabilizes cash flow, which increases the company’s valuation. This case underlines that pricing strategy isn’t only about where to charge more; it’s also about knowing when a strategic give-back can pay dividends in loyalty and LTV.

These examples all show the same thing: pricing is a high-leverage tool. Whether it’s simplifying packaging, modernizing pricing models, or tightening discount governance, aligning price with value delivered improves key SaaS KPIs, fast.

When customers see your pricing as fair and value-aligned, they:

Buy faster
Stay longer
Expand more
Push back less at renewal

And that directly improves revenue quality, margin, and valuation.

Up next: How do you systematize these wins? In the next section, we’ll explore how Monetizely’s hands-on, data-driven approach consistently delivers outcomes PE operators care about, and why it outperforms traditional consulting models.

Monetizely’s 5-Step Pricing Approach vs. Traditional Consultants

By now, it’s clear that pricing is a key lever for value creation. The challenge for PE firms is how to execute these pricing transformations quickly and effectively. This is where Monetizely’s point of view and methodology come in. Built on the belief that pricing should be pragmatic and operationally grounded, we help PE-backed companies unlock ROI faster than traditional consultants through a proven 5-step model, honed across dozens of SaaS transformations.

Here’s how our method works, and why it outperforms big-firm strategies:

Step 1: Segmentation

We start by identifying and understanding the customer segments and use cases across your portfolio. This ensures every pricing decision ties back to customer value drivers. Traditional consultants might do a market study and stop there; we use segmentation as a practical tool to tailor packaging and pricing for each segment in your PortCo. For a PE roll-up, this means we map out, for example, which acquisition serves mid-market vs enterprise, and how willingness-to-pay differs. This granular view prevents mispricing and reveals upsell paths within each segment.

Step 2: Positioning & Packaging

Next, we refine how the product(s) are packaged and positioned to each segment. This could mean creating new bundle offers, redefining tier value propositions, or unifying packaging across multiple products. Our approach is very hands-on: we’ll literally help restructure your price menu or software editions in ways that customers intuitively understand (and are willing to pay for).

Unlike generic advice, we consider your operational constraints, what your sales team can sell and what your product roadmap is. The result is packaging that’s both attractive to the market and implementable by your team. One PortCo we worked with had 9 different packages across two merged products; we helped them streamline to 3 cohesive tiers, which simplified sales training and boosted upsell conversion. Traditional firms might have left them with a 50-slide deck of recommendations; we worked with their team to actually roll out the new packages within a quarter.

Step 3: Pricing Metric

As highlighted earlier, choosing what you charge for is pivotal. Monetizely’s framework puts a big emphasis on selecting or refining the pricing metric to best align with value. We analyze usage patterns, talk to customers, and leverage SaaS benchmarks.

Whether it’s moving to a usage-based model, adopting a hybrid (base fee + consumption), or simply shifting from one metric (e.g. per user) to another (per 1,000 transactions), we focus on metrics that scale with customer success. This step often differentiates Monetizely’s work, we’re not afraid to suggest bold changes if the data shows it will unlock growth.

And we back it up with a rollout plan (e.g. pilot programs, grandfathering logic) to de-risk the change. Many big-name consultants shy away from upending the pricing metric because it’s “too operational,” but that’s exactly where the gold can be. Our view: if the pricing metric is broken, you must fix it (with proper change management) to maximize long-term value.

Step 4: Rate Setting (Price Levels)

Here we determine the optimal price points for each package/metric, using a mix of market research, data analysis, and testing. Monetizely’s rate-setting process is very data-driven – often using in-market experiments or at least customer feedback rather than pure spreadsheet modeling. The aim is to find the price that best captures value while remaining competitive. We often see companies either drastically underpricing (out of fear) or occasionally overpricing a weak value offering, both leaving money on the table in different ways.

With our approach, one client was able to implement a ~15% price increase across legacy customers with minimal churn, adding ~$$5M ARR overnight, because we identified that their value delivery had grown and the market would bear it. The ROI on that single move was enormous, and it was done in weeks.

Traditional consultants might have spent months on willingness-to-pay surveys to tell you what price to charge, by the time that’s done, the market may have shifted. We prefer a faster, 80/20 analytical approach, coupled with live testing (e.g. roll out new pricing to a small set of new customers, measure response). In short, we enable you to act, not over-analyze.

Step 5: Pricing Operations & Enablement

This is arguably Monetizely’s secret sauce and a big reason our clients see faster enablement. We don’t just make recommendations; we help you operationalize them. That means setting up the processes, tools, and training so the new pricing strategy actually sticks. We’ll help your team implement a CPQ system update, create pricing guides for the sales reps, establish a deal desk with clear rules, and even script the talk tracks for explaining price changes to customers.

By cutting through execution barriers, we speed up time-to-value, your pricing changes hit the market faster, and you start seeing results faster. This is a stark contrast to traditional consultants who might deliver a report and leave you to figure out execution.

We often hear from clients who’ve tried the Big 3 consulting route before: the firm gave them a theoretical pricing model that looked great in PowerPoint, but their sales team couldn’t practically use it, or it required heavy IT work that wasn’t scoped. Monetizely’s hands-on, operational mindset avoids those pitfalls. Our team has led pricing at top SaaS companies, so we know how to get it done on the ground.

Why This Approach Works

Faster ROI: Traditional consulting projects take 6–9 months and millions in spend, often delivering results only after implementation delays. Monetizely engagements drive results within 1–2 quarters, often increasing ARR by 20–80% and ASP by 15–40%.
Built-In Enablement: Because we work shoulder-to-shoulder with management and GTM teams, your organization learns how to price, not just what to price. This builds a lasting internal capability, not consultant dependency.
Agile vs. Academic: Traditional firms favor exhaustive analysis and theoretical models. We favor velocity: shipping improvements like unbundling a valuable add-on or refining sales motion ASAP to capture near-term value, then iterating.

In short, Monetizely’s 5-step pricing model is tailored for pragmatism and speed, exactly what PE owners need to maximize value under time pressure. It’s pricing helps that’s not just strategic, but operationally grounded (in fact, our clients often call us “part of the team” during these projects). If the choice is a year-long academic study vs. a few months of focused execution, the latter clearly offers better ROI when you have a 3-5 year hold period. Our philosophy: every pricing change should earn its keep – if it doesn’t drive value, we don’t bother. That mindset, plus the comprehensive framework to cover all bases (from market segmentation to sales enablement), is what sets our approach apart.

Conclusion: Making Pricing a PE Value Creation Priority

Private equity firms that overlook pricing do so at their own risk. Pricing touches everything, growth, retention, margins, and the valuation multiple. In roll-ups especially, it’s often the missing link between a fragmented set of acquisitions and a scalable, high-performing platform.

Handled poorly, pricing leaks value. Handled well, it delivers fast, measurable wins:

Harmonized packaging boosts cross-sell
Smarter pricing models drive usage and expansion
Tighter operations lift win rates and margins

The lesson: treat pricing as a deliberate value creation lever, not a post-deal fix.

Start early. Be structured. Focus on customer value. Use frameworks like Monetizely’s five steps to assess segmentation, packaging, metrics, levels, and systems. Move fast, but communicate clearly, and bring in specialists if needed. Pricing is too strategic to wing.

Importantly, pricing isn’t “set it and forget it.” Markets shift. Products evolve. Competitors react. The best-performing PortCos build pricing agility into their culture and treat monetization as an ongoing discipline.

In today’s market, pricing might be the difference between a decent exit and an exceptional one. So don’t bury it at the bottom of the checklist. Put pricing front and center, and let it compound your returns.