Ask HN: Should I Price It

[kubeden]

Hi guys. New here. New founder too. I need some help figuring out how to price my product.. I'm not sure about the rules so I'll not post any of my product links or whatever.

So I currently have a product that consists of a Chrome extension and a web platform. It allows my users to highlight any text on the internet, add notes and open LLM chats directly on-page linked to their highlights.

My current features are:

- highlight text (underline / background as a highlight style)

- add notes to highlights

- open LLM chats directly on-page

- auto-scroll to highlights (works on LLM apps like Claude, ChatGPT, etc.)

- auto-sync to their account so they can cross-browser it

So... what should I price it? What should the model even look like?? Some form of freemium, of course.. but what? Nr of highlights, notes & chats per day and then something like $7.99?

Are the current features too few to price it? I guess to figure out if anyone wants to pay for this core functionality the features are just enough?

Anyway, any input appreciated.

[Proziam]

For a single user I would start pricing at $5/m on an annual subscription or $9 for monthly. Getting customers in the door and retaining them through the early product evolution cycles is the major hurdle in the early stages.

Beyond that, I would create an offering with 1-2 features tuned towards business customers. This kind of tool is a great knowledge management addition, and knowledge sharing is hugely valuable for business customers.

I'd price it the same per seat at the start ($5/m annual vs 9$/m monthly) and sell multiple seats at a time this way. If this works well, you will have found an existence proof of a highly lucrative customer group.

[kubeden]

Appreciate the HN response too. $9 seems reasonable for me too.. kinda. Maybe for v1.5 when I have sharable collections. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to lure them in with a $5/m, no annual, and then up to $7 and $9 in two stages, introducing annual?

[Proziam]

The price sensitivity thresholds of your median customer is not likely to be a factor in this range.

What is a factor is 'getting a deal' and customer conviction. You want to give them an offer that makes them feel good about signing up immediately (increase conversion) and makes them feel like the product has substantial long-term value (induces post-purchase rationalization).

The annual plan with significant sale price accomplishes both goals, with the benefit of smoothing out your revenues and making it much easier to estimate your ROAS.

[beardyw]

My law. Whatever number you come up with, double it.

[kubeden]

Unfortunately your law won't work for me because I am a very special breed of a consumer and I would calmly pay a solid $14.99/m for it if the website copy manages to sell it to me. So $14.99/m sounds unrealistic for what I'm offering, let alone $29.99/m ... :)

[captaincrunch]

Keep it in the single digits, most people when looking over their Credit cards (when looking to cut things) look for big numbers.

[kubeden]

Hm. Yeah, sounds good for retention. I mostly struggle with the initial pricing now though.. someone suggested a lower number like $4.99 as initial offering and then once it ramps up, to do small jumps until even maybe $9.99.