Build Your SaaS

We're hoping to launch Transistor officially in July 2018.

And that means we need to figure out a pricing strategy. What types of tiers and plans should we offer?

SaaS pricing examples:

• Hootsuite
• WPEngine
• Sumo
• StatusPage

Patrick Campbell, from Price Intelligently, says there are three aspects of a pricing strategy:

1. Positioning: who are the right customers for your product? How will you target and attract them?
2. Packaging: what features are included in each tier? What value does each type of customer want from your product?
3. Pricing: putting a price on your tiers that reflects the value your customer receives.

Where did we get stuck? Jon and I started by looking at who had signed up for early access to Transistor:

• Hobbyists – podcasting for fun, two people talking, no advertising.
• Prosumers – side-project podcasting, may have a bit of income, want to go pro.
• Solopreneurs – solo founders building smaller tech products. 
• Small tech teams – teams of 3-10 people building larger software products.
• Bigger brands / enterprise companies.

This list brought up a question: how do we define our target customer? Is "podcast hosting and analytics for professionals" too broad?

Here's our homework for this week: we're going to let this simmer, we're going to talk to smart people about pricing, and we're going to come back to this next week.

Question of the week:

Tweet to @jon and @mijustin and let us know: how should we price our SaaS?

Show notes

• Jason Fried - Ass pricing
• Patrick Campbell - Price Intelligently 
• Jason Cohen - WPengine tiered pricing
• Transistor.fm
• Transistor.fm on Instagram
• Transistor.fm on Twitter
• Jon Buda is back on Twitter: @jonbuda
• Justin Jackson on Twitter here: @mijustin

★ Please review us in iTunes – T-shirt contest!  Leave a review you’ll be entered to win a limited edition Transistor t-shirt!

Want to start a podcast on Transistor? Justin has a special coupon for you: get 15% off your first year of hosting: transistor.fm/justin