How to create an effective pricing page
Pricing page checklist + reviews of 3 startups' pricing pages—with Maura Ginty & Emily Kramer.
When done right, a pricing page reinforces your positioning, provides clarity about the value of your offering to your audience, makes the sales process easier, and increases overall conversion. When not done well, prospects get confused about your offering, get sticker shock, or feel like your product is not for them. Prospects will bounce to a competitor or stick with their status quo solution.
Earlier this month, I wrote about why plans and pricing pages are essential. This newsletter goes a step further and explains how to create an effective pricing page—and includes deep-dive reviews of some pricing pages we found in the wild.
Part 1: How to create & evaluate your startup’s pricing page
Part 2: Reviews of pricing pages: Count, Klaviyo, Lattice
I brought in an expert to collaborate on this newsletter and evaluate pricing pages with me. Maura Ginty is fractional CMO and pricing enthusiast who’s tackled pricing and packaging dozens of times both in-house and as a consultant. Previously, she was CMO at Mode and VP of Marketing at Kissmetrics, plus she’s advised LeanData, Sendoso, Twilio and more. Thanks Maura!
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Part 1: Pricing page checklist
How to build your plans & pricing structure
The number one fail mode for pricing pages typically happens before you even make the page: bad plans & pricing strategy. The absence of strategy becomes obvious to your prospects: your pricing page won’t make a lot of sense to anyone. So, before you create or update your pricing page, make sure your strategy is sound.
A key part of that process is figuring out how you’ll structure and price your plan. Here’s a lay of the land to help you do that. Note: The structures are not mutually exclusive and startups often combine feature-based plans with usage or user-based pricing, but avoid getting too complex!
Lots of startups are shifting towards usage-based pricing—especially AI startups. With usage-based pricing, the price is aligned with the value customers receive and customers don’t overpay for unused seats or features. Usage-based pricing can be combined with a subscription-fee for a feature-based plan too. e.g. Twilio, AWS, and OpenAI’s API have usage usage-based pricing.
In addition to choosing the optimal structure for your plans and pricing, follow these core tenets of pricing strategy:
Analyze 5 factors that go into pricing: Perceived value to ICP + willingness to pay + cost + competitor & complementary product pricing + customer feedback (Try Ignition to analyze competitor pricing and pricing feedback)
Simplicity & transparency: Straightforward & clear pricing structures are more effective in converting prospects.
Iterative process: Pricing is never done. It requires continuous adjustments based on feedback and market changes.
Value-based or usage-based: Pricing should align as closely as possible with the perceived value to the customer.
Include 2+ drivers to upgrade to the next plan: E.g. have not 1 but 2 critical features in each package. Or provide additional seats or usage limits, plus another critical feature in each plan. If you don’t have this, you might have the wrong number of plans.
More resources on pricing strategy
If “pricing strategy” still sounds overwhelming, we understand. Pricing is one of the most cross-functional exercises possible–making it ripe for differing opinions and goals. Luckily this topic has already been covered by some of the marketing greats.
Openview on Mastering SaaS Pricing and Resource Guide
Paddle on Anatomy of SaaS Pricing Strategy
David Kellogg’s Martini-specific explanation of pricing
Wynter’s Peep Laja on B2B SaaS Pricing Lessons Learned
Stripe’s Atlas Guide to SaaS Pricing
How to evaluate your plans & pricing page
Once you have a plans and pricing structure that makes sense for your audience, you still have to make a page that converts well. We’ve categorized the key attributes of a successful pricing page in the below table. We’ll then explain how to evaluate your own page using the checklist—and the fail modes to avoid.
Plan structure: Each prospect can easily determine the appropriate package
Offer ~3 clearly-defined plans and don’t box each prospect into 1 plan only–make room for the upsell! And if you offer multiple products or features, make it really clear what’s an add-on vs. what’s part of a plan.
Plan options: Do you have too few or too many plans? Are there clear drivers to get a prospect to purchase a higher-tier plan?
Obvious categorization of plans: Do your plans & corresponding features make immediate sense to your priority ICPs?
Set up to maximize revenue: Behind the scenes, do these plans help you maximize revenue and avoid selling one-off features with widely variable pricing and discounting?
3 plans is typically the magic number. Anything more usually causes overload, anything less doesn’t provide enough options. Also, think about movie theater or popcorn prices when you design your plan structure.
Avoid these fail modes when creating plans:
Difficult for your ICPs to select a plan: Prospects should feel like there’s a near-perfect plan for them after quickly reviewing the pricing page.Your plans shouldn’t be vague and ambiguous or be hastily copied from a competitor’s site.
Plans are too similar: It’s always obvious when there’s just not enough product or services for an enterprise package. In these cases, don’t force it. Say “coming soon” or encourage prospects to reach out to talk to you about their dream features.
Pricing: Easy to calculate & understand price
Make it easy for prospects to understand the value of your product and calculate how much they’ll pay. Avoid overly complex pricing and prominent discounts, as these can signal a flawed pricing strategy and cause confusion.
Pricing listed for all but highest tier: Do you list pricing? See MKT1’s previous newsletter for why transparent pricing is the way to go.
Pricing driven by an obvious value metric: Is it easy to figure out what the price is based on? Is there a clear value metric or pricing method (subscription, usage, transaction, and or seat/user based)?
Easy for prospects to calculate how much they’ll pay: Can your ICPs easily figure out how much they’ll likely pay? Will there be calculation errors that may cause sticker shock later in the sales process?
Avoid these fail modes:
Pricing makes no sense: As a prospect, figuring out how much you’ll pay shouldn’t be calculus. There’s a fine line between too little and too much information we’ll explore when we review pricing pages below.
Discounting is front and center: Jumping straight to discounts signals a flawed pricing strategy—either a lack of discipline in addressing pricing issues or a sales team too willing to compromise during rough quarters. While discounts might help hit short-term goals, they create variable pricing headaches in the future, encourage people to keep negotiating since you aren’t firm on price, and cheapen your product.
UX: Pricing page is easy to find & has a simple structure
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Make it easy to find pricing and easy to buy your product from the pricing page. Prospects who reach your pricing page are valuable, don't distract them or require too much thinking to understand your offering.
Pricing in top nav & footer: Is the page a cohesive part of the customer journey? Can prospects easily find this page? Are CTAs to this page listed in the right places throughout your site? Does Pricing show up as one of the sitelinks in your search results?
Clean design + standard page design: Does your pricing page clearly lay out your plans, the price for each, and the corresponding features? Does it follow the patterns and structure of other pricing pages?
Clear CTAs without distractions or pop ups: Is the page set up to drive conversion? Is your page full of pop-ups, CTAs to other content, or too many options? Do you make it obvious how to take the next step to sign up or request a meeting?
Avoid these fail modes:
Buried pricing page: If your page is hidden under “Product > Why [Us] > Resources” or deep in an endless footer, you probably fear your pricing will scare people away. Instead, figure out how to price your product correctly, and put this page in your top nav so you can get a conversion rate boost.
Pricing page doesn’t follow a standard format: Your pricing page is not the place to win awards on page design, there’s a standard structure you can follow to make it quick and easy to understand. We even have a pricing page wireframe for paid subscribers, here.
Content: Communicates your offering & its value
Your pricing page should include high-level positioning, and “positioning” for each plan. Explain who each plan is for, what each plan is, why the plan is a great option. And, don’t assume anyone understands your internal lingo and language.
Restate positioning: Do you restate who your product is for, what your product is, and why it’s better (aka positioning). For more on positioning, see last month’s newsletter.
Features & plans described effectively: Does each plan have a clear description? Is it easy to understand what feature is in what plan? Does your page clearly communicate the features and the benefits to justify the price?
Objection handling through FAQ &/or Chat: Is there an easy way to get top questions answered? Does the page effectively explain any complexities in plans & pricing? Do you cover common objections clearly?
Avoid these fail modes:
Assuming prospects remember everything: While prospects usually have a basic understanding of your product before visiting the pricing page, they won’t remember everything they’ve seen or read. Restate the most important things—the hero is a great place to do this.
Shipping internal-speak: Relatedly, plan names, user roles, feature names, etc. should be in jargon-free lingo that don’t require a PHD in your company’s nomenclature to understand.
Feature overload: Product and sales may push for “feature dumping”—and for good reason: they love the product and think prospects will be wowed by sharing all the things. It’s up to marketing to work cross-functionally to prioritize what features are highlighted and included in each plan—and which are relegated to well-organized feature list.
Part 2: Pricing pages reviewed: Count, Klaviyo & Lattice
All 3 of the companies we reviewed actually have pricing pages with transparent pricing—this is a great start. No startup is perfect, and we hope our reviews serve as constructive feedback for each company and that everyone can learn from looking at these pages and reviews.
We selected these pricing pages as they represent a range of company sizes, number of products, target audiences, and ways that users derive value from the product. There’s a mix of sales-led and self-serve GTM motions, as well as a variety of value metrics (like seat or usage-based).
Count pricing page review
Includes: Sales-led GTM motion, free trial, flat subscription for each plan, “good, better, best”-style plans, early-stage startup
Full disclosure: Emily is an investor in Count through MKT1 Capital and is working with them to better optimize plans & pricing later this week. They’ve made some iterations here already (which is great progress for an early-stage startup), and are ready to improve!
Plans structure
Each of the 4 plans includes varying numbers of analysts, collaborators, & explorers (user roles), canvas & workspaces, billing options, and features. While a lot of thought went into this plans model, it’s a bit too complex.
“Internal speak” makes understanding what’s in each plan confusing. For example, what is 2D vs 3D data? What’s a canvas or a workspace? What’s the difference between analysts, collaborators, and explorers? What’s a canvas?
“Data analysts” are pushed to talk with sales, but Count also offers a free trial. We suspect a lot of prospects choose the trial, instead of talking to sales and starting with the appropriate plan. A reverse-free trial of each plan may make sense here.
What’s a reverse free trial? With a traditional freemium model, customers start with a limited free version. Instead, a reverse trial offers a fully-featured, premium version of the product for a limited time, before transitioning the customer back to a basic or free version if they don’t upgrade before the trial period ends.
Conflicting views from Maura & Emily: A long feature grid could be considered “feature dumping”, but may be necessary with a technical buyer and multiple license/user types. Emily thinks the plans grid should highlight only what’s most important at the time of purchase, but thinks its okay to include an organized list of all your features below-the-fold on your pricing page only. We both think a/b testing (assuming you have a high volume of web traffic) and surveying your customers about which features are most important can help you streamline feature grids.
Pricing structure
While we appreciate the simplicity of clear, flat pricing for each plan, the price jumps may scare away prospects who fall in between plans. Each plan comes with a flat # of analysts, explorers, viewers, and collaborators (user roles) and a set of features. Due to this pricing strategy, there are major jumps in plan prices–from $199 to $1799 per month.
This also means some companies are overpaying within their plan. To better map pricing to the value a company gets, they can introduce a usage or seat-based component to pricing on top of the platform subscription.
It’s unusual to see monthly & billing options for some plans but not all. Typically, you want to get as many customers on annual pricing as possible.
UX
We like that the page follows a standard format and is scannable, plus it’s easy to find in the top nav.
The features list mirrors the plans grid, which makes it much easier to digest–despite how many features are included.
Visually highlighting certain plans with different colors or labels like “Most popular” can be helpful to prospects. But labeling the plan with the highest listed price tag, in this case “Scale” doesn’t add much value.
Content
While the plan names are clear, the copy and feature naming needs revision to better explain the value of the product to multiple ICPs, in terms everyone can understand.
Positioning is partially covered in the hero, but given the number of data notebooks & BI tools, they could more effectively highlight who they are for and why they are better than alternatives.
There’s an FAQ, but it only has 3 questions—and doesn’t explain terms like “canvas” and “workspace”. It’s also a missed opportunity to tackle objections or prove ROI.
Not a lot of info beyond the plans and features is shared: No social proof, no testimonials, no additional content, no chatbot.
Count recommendations summary
Keep the subscription fee for each plan, and add a seat-based fee. This will simplify the number of plans and eliminate the price jumps. Adding a slider to calculate the seat fee might be helpful.
Better define the user roles—and potentially remove some to simplify the offering. Using more standard Editor and Viewer roles might make things easier to understand.
Add more context throughout the page to make positioning & value more clear.(Count’s product combines features of BI tools into a Figma-style canvas, and that’s not obvious from reading the pricing page)
We also reviewed 2 more pricing pages in depth: Klaviyo & Lattice.
To read those reviews, subscribe to our paid newsletter or keep on reading if you’re already a paid subscriber.
More from MKT1
🙏 Thanks again to our sponsors: Positional: the all-in-one toolset for content marketing & SEO strategy; Ignition: the source of truth for product marketing; and Paramark: the platform to analyze your marketing spend.
💰 We also recommend checking out Paramark’s pricing page. We used this straightforward page as the basis for our Pricing Page Wireframe (a template available to paid subscribers).
✂️ Templates for paid subscribers: Paid subscribers can find all product marketing & positioning templates here including categorized pricing page examples, pricing page wireframe, and the complete screenshot reviews of Klaviyo, Count, and Lattice’s pricing pages.
👁️ “Why you need a pricing page” Newsletter: Check our other July post on pricing.
🧑🚀 Job board: Jobs from the MKT1 community—with a new and improved design. Paid subscribers can now add jobs to our job board for free!
And thanks to Maura Ginty for co-writing this newsletter with me!
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