Is your pricing model losing you money?
Getting your pricing right is a delicate balance. Price too high and you lose users; price too low and you leave money on the table.
This challenge intensifies as you scale. Misaligned pricing can seriously damage your brand and weaken your competitive position in the market.
This pressure is real in a growing market. McKinsey & Company notes a 27% increase over the last two years in SaaS spending. This highlights a huge opportunity for revenue growth.
To capture this opportunity without alienating users, you need a strategic pricing framework that aligns with both product value and customer needs.
In this article, I’ll walk you through six effective SaaS go to market pricing models. We will explore how each can help you maximize revenue.
You’ll learn how to choose the right model to boost your average revenue per user and reduce churn in key customer segments.
Let’s dive in.
Quick Takeaways:
- ✅ Implement tiered pricing to strategically segment users with distinct packages, maximizing revenue and reducing churn.
- ✅ Adopt usage-based pricing, linking costs directly to consumption, for scalable revenue growth and frictionless user adoption.
- ✅ Apply value-based pricing by linking price to perceived customer ROI, anchoring your product’s worth in tangible business outcomes.
- ✅ Use cost-plus models to calculate total expenses plus markup, establishing a crucial financial baseline for profitability.
- ✅ Align pricing with competitors as a reference, enabling strategic market positioning and accelerating market share capture.
1. Implement Tiered Pricing to Segment Users Strategically
One price doesn’t fit all users.
A single plan alienates both small startups and large enterprises, leaving significant revenue on the table.
You’re forced to choose between being too expensive for new users or too cheap for power users, actively losing potential customers at both ends of the spectrum.
In fact, Benchmarkit reports companies using hybrid models see the 21% highest median growth. This shows that more sophisticated pricing directly impacts your ability to scale.
This mismatch is a clear barrier, but tiered pricing provides a strategic path forward to solve it.
This is where tiered pricing shines.
It allows you to create distinct packages, or tiers, designed for different user segments based on their specific needs and usage levels.
Each tier offers different features or limits, creating an upgrade path for your customers as they scale their own business with your tool.
For example, a “Basic” plan for freelancers and a “Pro” plan for teams. These structured SaaS go to market pricing models ensure you capture maximum value at every stage.
This creates a natural customer growth journey.
This model maximizes revenue by aligning price with value, reducing churn among smaller users while properly monetizing your enterprise clients.
Ready to implement a strategic pricing model that maximizes revenue and drives growth for your SaaS? Book a discovery call with Boterns to explore how our expertise can help you achieve this and more.
2. Adopt Usage-Based Pricing for Scalable Revenue Growth
Does your pricing punish user growth?
Flat-rate models leave money on the table with power users and deter smaller customers who can’t justify a high initial cost.
This creates a balancing act where you risk alienating advocates or failing to capture maximum value from your engaged clients, hurting scalability.
A Monetizely report shows 56% of companies now incorporating consumption-based elements. Static pricing is clearly becoming less viable for growth-focused businesses.
This rigidity limits your revenue potential.
This is where usage-based pricing shines.
This model directly links the price a customer pays to their consumption of your product, whether it’s API calls, data storage, or active users.
Customers can start small and scale their costs as usage grows, creating a frictionless adoption path for new users and future enterprise accounts.
This is one of the most scalable SaaS go to market pricing models because your revenue grows alongside customer success, creating a natural upsell motion without intervention.
It perfectly aligns value with cost.
By connecting your revenue directly to customer value, you reduce churn risk and build a powerful foundation for sustainable, long-term growth and profitability.
3. Apply Value-Based Pricing to Reflect Customer Value
Is your pricing tied to customer success?
If not, you likely undermonetize clients and leave revenue on the table by not capturing the true value they receive.
This disconnect happens when pricing fails to match the value from new features, creating a serious pricing gap that silently erodes your business profitability over time.
Sales conversations get stuck on feature lists instead of ROI. This commoditizes your offering and eats into your margins.
This misalignment makes scaling difficult. Connect your pricing directly to the value your customers actually experience.
Enter value-based pricing.
This model directly links your price to the perceived value your product delivers, like increased revenue, cost savings, or saved time for your customers.
It shifts the conversation from cost to ROI. This anchors your product’s worth in tangible business outcomes, not just a list of features.
For example, if your software saves a team 20 hours per month, you can quantify that value. It’s one of the best SaaS go to market pricing models available.
It makes your pricing easy to defend.
This approach helps you capture maximum revenue from high-value segments and reinforces your product’s position as an essential investment, not just a simple expense.
4. Use Cost-Plus Models to Determine Baseline Pricing
Pricing must first cover your costs.
Setting prices without knowing your expenses is a pure gamble, potentially leaving money on the table or even operating at a loss.
Without a clear baseline, your strategy lacks a foundation. This makes it impossible to justify prices to internal stakeholders and leads to unprofitable customer acquisition.
You end up guessing at profit margins. These can quietly erode as operational costs for development, support, and marketing inevitably increase.
This uncertainty blocks sustainable growth. You need a simple starting point before exploring the other models to maximize revenue.
This is where cost-plus pricing helps.
This model provides a solid financial floor by calculating your total costs and then adding a standard markup to determine the price.
It is a straightforward approach that ensures you cover every expense. It guarantees basic profitability on each sale you make.
Add your development, marketing, and support costs, then apply your profit margin. It’s one of the most foundational SaaS go to market pricing models available.
This creates a logical, defensible price point.
While not as nuanced as value-based pricing, it establishes a crucial baseline to ensure your business never operates at a loss.
5. Align Pricing with Competitors to Capture Market Share
How do you price against your rivals?
Pricing in a vacuum can alienate customers who compare your tool to alternatives, leading to lost market share and missed trial conversions.
If your price is too high, you seem out of touch. Go too low, and you risk devaluing your product while leaving significant revenue on the table.
This gets tricky when competitors use different models, like usage-based plans against your tiers, creating confusing choices for potential buyers.
This uncertainty creates friction. A competitor anchor grounds your decisions and helps you win over users looking for alternatives.
This model offers a clear market benchmark.
Competitor-based pricing involves setting your prices relative to what direct and indirect competitors charge. It helps position your product within the existing market.
This approach doesn’t mean you should simply copy their prices. Instead, use their pricing as a reference point for your own strategy.
Analyze key competitors to understand their pricing. These insights inform your own SaaS go to market pricing models, whether you use tiered or value-based approaches.
It is about strategic positioning, not imitation.
This method helps you enter a crowded market by meeting customer expectations head-on, reducing friction and accelerating your ability to capture market share.
Ready to refine your pricing strategy and capture more market share? Book a discovery call with us to discuss your unique challenges and how our agency can help your SaaS thrive.
6. Implement Per-User Pricing for Consistent Revenue
Struggling with revenue predictability?
Forecasting is a guessing game when revenue streams are unpredictable, making it hard to plan for growth or budget effectively.
This makes justifying marketing spend or hiring talent difficult. Your financial planning is constantly reactive, rather than proactive, which stifles long-term strategic initiatives.
Without a stable baseline, managing cash flow becomes an unnecessarily complex challenge for your leadership.
This lack of consistent income is a significant hurdle. A simpler model can provide the stability you need to scale.
This is where per-user pricing shines.
Per-user pricing charges a flat fee for each person using your software. This creates a highly predictable, recurring revenue stream that you can easily forecast.
Its simplicity makes it easy for customers to understand and for your sales team to communicate. This clarity reduces friction during the sales process.
For instance, a project management tool might charge $10 per user per month. It’s one of the most straightforward SaaS go to market pricing models, aligning your growth with your customer’s.
Your revenue scales directly with their adoption.
This model is ideal for collaboration tools where value is tied to user numbers, ensuring consistent financial footing and simple scalability for your business.
Conclusion
Your pricing model defines your future growth.
In today’s maturing market, getting this balance wrong means leaving critical revenue on the table or losing users to agile competitors.
McKinsey & Company reports a now 12.2% stabilized B2B SaaS CAGR. In this competitive space, the right pricing strategy is crucial for capturing your full share of the market.
That’s precisely where these models come in.
This guide has equipped you with six powerful frameworks to move beyond guesswork and confidently align your pricing with true customer value.
For instance, shifting to value-based pricing ensures your revenue scales directly with customer success. These strategic SaaS go to market pricing models are built for sustainable, long-term growth.
Choose one model that resonates most with your startup’s goals. Start mapping out what an implementation could look like this week.
Maximize revenue and stop losing valuable users.
Want to implement these strategies for sustainable growth and maximize your revenue? Book a discovery call to discuss how we can help you craft the perfect pricing model for your SaaS.