[tannerbrockwell]

Patio11 writes on positioning and pricing in the SaaS space. [1] He works at Stripe, and has an updated discussion as well. [2] I would say that switching to a Subscription model will probably be the most significant part of your transition.

"I’d probably increase your pricing to $99 / $499 / $2,499. This intentionally prices out pathological customers on the lower end, who will be exceedingly difficult to deal with. It is my impression that this market is rife with them and that they will require a lot of handholding."

[1]: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/saas_pric... [2]: https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/saas-pricing

[runawaybottle]

Are there any good reads on the notion of the ‘pathological customer’?

[DoreenMichele]

I've seen a number of pieces that talk about getting rid of bad users by getting rid of the freemium model. I've done some looking around and the search phrase "freemium bad idea" seems like it comes up with some hits for the topic.

People who want it for free are often unreasonably demanding, feel entitled, need a lot of hand holding and education about how to use the product, what it's really for, etc. People willing and able to pay are much more likely to have their act together, have reasonable expectations, etc.

I have mixed feelings about it because of the social implications of excluding those who most need access to something for free, but you should at least be aware that users who want it for free are more likely than other users to be people with personal problems and poor boundaries who can be a pain to deal with. If you want to give it away for free -- at least some of the time -- you need to be aware that setting boundaries other than price will be a necessary part of protecting your time and sanity.

All businesses do some things for free. For example, Walmart does not charge you to use their bathroom.

But that doesn't mean all cases of giving it away for free are equally good business ideas. Sometimes they are extremely bad ideas and understanding what you should be willing to do for free and when, where, how and why is probably a very understudied and critical detail of how to create a viable business.

[tubularhells]

I'd say if you go freemium, do not provide support. Have an email address there with autoreply set up that says 'your account is free and as such, we cannot promise an answer'. Then have a dedicated zendesk integration for the actual paying customers. No problem giving basic service away for free, just make sure you don't spend time on people who leech.

[cph_dev]

Thank you, I will read this, it looks interesting

[leesalminen]

Just to follow up, I’m also in the B2B SaaS space and positioning ourselves as the “premium” option with the highest price definitely helps separate the wheat from the chaff. Every time we offered a discount to a business they turned out to be the neediest, sucking up a disproportionate amount of support resource. Every single time.

[codegeek]

This. Every time we have offered a discount to a client (we are premium in our industry as well), it almost always bites us. I just lost a client who decided that it wasn't worth it even after getting a 20% recurring discount because he wants 10 new features that he didnt realize when signing up but doesn't wanna pay for anything. Never again. Don't discount the price. Give extras if needed but never discount your price.

[cph_dev]

Thanks, it is true, until now we have given all our users very good customer service, but going forward we cannot do this for all, we want to focus on the paying users more then the free ones.