The good, bad and ugly of SaaS pricing changes

The only constant in software pricing is change

👋 Hi, it’s Kyle Poyar and welcome to Growth Unhinged, my weekly newsletter exploring the hidden playbooks behind the fastest-growing startups.

The only constant in software pricing is change. Folks monetize new products, launch an Enterprise plan, raise prices, offer introductory discounts, or insert usage-based paywalls (looking at you, ChatGPT) — to tap into pricing as a powerful profit lever.

John Kotowski and Rob Litterst keep tabs on these changes through PricingSaaS, the pricing intelligence platform. I’ve invited them back to share the latest.

🎁 Want to go deeper into SaaS pricing with Rob? Join his new course on Maven and get $100 off with the code KYLExMAVEN. (You can explore the full Growth Unhinged x Maven collection here.)

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Tracking 3,500 of the top players in SaaS throughout 2024, one thing has become crystal clear: pricing strategy doesn’t sleep.

Across the PricingSaaS 500 index, we saw a total of 339 total changes – including 126 pricing updates (increases, decreases, discounts) and 213 packaging updates (new plans, plan consolidation). Within those changes, we found 29 companies changed prices multiple times, 31 changed plans multiple times, and 42 updated both price and plans.

The takeaway? The top players in SaaS are increasingly iterating on pricing and packaging. This should prove useful in 2025, when we expect pricing models to continue shifting from charging for access to charging for outcomes.

After inspecting the actual changes themselves, we have thoughts. Let’s comb through the good, the bad, and the ugly to help you make smarter pricing decisions and avoid common pitfalls in 2025.

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The Good

Loom shifted from an AI add-on to an AI-focused plan.

Loom had been offering an AI add-on, but pivoted to an AI-focused tier late last year. The tiered approach offers a nice contrast to Notion, which monetizes AI as an $8 add- on. The difference is Notion offers a perpetual free plan that users can stay on forever. The add-on gives them a way to monetize their massive freemium base.

Loom’s freemium plan has a usage constraint of 25 videos, basically making it a different version of a free trial. In that context, an add-on doesn't make as much sense, since free users would run out of videos anyway, and need to upgrade to a paid tier.

The new tier gives Loom a straightforward way to monetize AI for business and Enterprise users. They also snuck a nice price increase in there, too 🔥

Pipedrive added an Enterprise plan and raised prices on the Advanced plan.

Combined, these moves will push more prospects to purchase the Professional plan, which is clearly their focus (note the Most Popular tag). The Enterprise plan serves as an anchor on the high end, making the Professional and Power plans look more affordable. Raising the price of the Advanced plan closes the gap on the low end, making the Professional plan look more appealing to budget-conscious prospects.

These pricing dynamics complement a meaningful upgrade in functionality between Advanced and Professional, including AI-powered sales tools, contract and proposal management, streamlined lead routing, and advanced reporting – giving even more reason for a prospect to pick the Professional plan.

(Since this update, Pipedrive doubled down, raising the price of Advanced even further, to $39 per month.)

Ahrefs craftily raised prices on the Enterprise plan.

On first look, it might seem like Ahrefs lowered the price of the Enterprise plan, but they actually increased the annual price by 20%. This is a smart, crafty move – and overdue.

Previously, the annual cost of the Enterprise plan was listed, making it hard for customers to compare the monthly price against other plans. This was likely done in an effort to emphasize the annual commitment for Enterprise, but it’s unnecessary. With this adjustment, visitors can easily compare the monthly prices of each plan, and it’s still clear that Enterprise customers need to sign an annual contract.

I’ve never understood companies comparing plans with different contract terms. It’s not the most important thing in the world, but it’s just an objectively worse experience for visitors. Kudos to Ahrefs for changing that, and raising the price in the process.

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The Bad

Docker aggressively raised prices for its Pro and Team plans, but kept Business steady.

We generally believe many SaaS companies underutilize price increases. Docker raised the price of its Pro and Team plans by 80% and 67%, respectively. If you visit the Docker subreddit, you’ll notice many disgruntled customers. While the magnitude of the increase here is high, that’s not our issue – any time you raise prices, some customers will complain.

The bigger question here is why leave out the Business plan? Docker added value to Business, including new Security and Compliance features, but didn’t touch the price point. It’s not lost on me that you could use the same argument that I used for Pipedrive for Docker – that leaving Business the same will drive more customers to Pro and Team. That’s true, but that would still be the case if they raised the price of Business at a lower magnitude than Pro and Team. Business customers are the least price sensitive by nature, and this feels like a missed opportunity to drive incremental revenue.

Zapier replaced the Starter plan with the Professional Plan.

There are things I do like about this change from Zapier. They consolidated plans, and tightened positioning. But the new Professional plan offers the same functionality as the old one, at a 61% discount. At Zapier’s scale, a small change can make a big difference, and dropping the Professional plan by $30 is meaningful. This feels like a missed opportunity to meet somewhere between the original price of the Starter plan ($19) and the Professional plan ($49).

Also, swapping one plan for another like this signals that there wasn’t much thought behind the original plan mix. Hopefully this move changes that.

(It’s worth noting that Zapier’s pricing scales based on usage — the number of tasks completed by an automated workflow. Zapier may be making a bet that if they get more customers on Professional, they’ll drive more usage and higher LTV.)

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The Ugly

Gumroad added a per transaction fee and a new marketplace fee.

Gumroad was already one of the more expensive platforms in the Creator Economy. Back in 2022, there was wide widespread criticism of their introduction of a 10% fee regardless of volume. Before that move, they scaled the take-rate at different levels of GMV (e.g., 5% at $10,000, 3% at $100,000). That move was painful to creators doing large amounts of revenue, and this move is painful to creators doing a high volume of transactions. Add a 30% marketplace fee and it’s hard to spin this move in a positive light.

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Wider Trends

A total of 126 pricing changes were recorded among the PricingSaaS 500. Of those, 89 were price increases and 37 were price decreases. We observed a wide range of average price increases by category, with most between 10% to 30%. Some categories, like Cloud & DevOps and Software Development & Testing, meaningfully outpaced the average.

Notable types of price increases included:

Monetizing middle tiers: Jira and Linear raised prices on their middle paid tiers by ~8% and ~16% respectively. Given the compromise effect, these plans are often the biggest monetization levers for SaaS companies. Increases like this are the blocking and tackling of an effective pricing strategy – something most companies should do regularly as they add more value to their product.

Steep increases for individual plans: Several companies, including Lucid and Anydesk also raised prices for Individual plans and Team plans, but raised the price of the individual plan more, making the next tier look more attractive.

Intro discounts: When it comes to price decreases, we observed several companies implementing intro discounts. Two examples are Xero and Lastpass, which makes sense given they’re in commoditizing markets with heavy competition.

We also saw 213 plan changes across the Pricing 500 Index. The main theme was adding plans, although there were instances of consolidating plans as well (as was the case with Zapier).

Plan additions: LaunchDarkly, Knack, and RevenueCat all added new Enterprise plans, suggesting a focus on monetizing upmarket customers.

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What’s Next

So far in 2025, we’re already seeing companies move from charging for access to charging for work. Understandably, many companies don’t want to flip the switch and completely disrupt their existing model. Sharp SaaS operators are figuring out how to do it in baby steps.

Confluence recently introduced automation rule runs as a value metric across all plans. In essence, automation rules take simple, manual tasks off a user’s plate, getting closer to doing real “work” for users.

Importantly, Confluence kept their existing model and price points, and simply added automation rule run limits to each plan. What I like about this strategy is that it introduces outcomes to customers in bite-sized pieces rather than a dramatic overhaul. Automation rule run limits ladder up to the cost per seat, so to customers, it just feels like added value in their existing plan.

The next step is monetizing outcomes separately as an add-on that ladders up to your core product. Chili Piper recently did this with Concierge Live and Handoff Live, which take on various tasks in the sales process. While the add-ons still are part of Chili Piper’s subscription pricing, the approach moves customers a step closer to paying explicitly for outcomes.

While we expect to see a lot of innovation here, and around generative AI pricing, it’s inevitable there will be new twists and turns in SaaS pricing strategy that we haven’t anticipated. As SaaS pricing evolves, we’ll be watching closely and reporting what we find. Follow along at

Good Better Best

and PricingSaaS to stay tuned.