Top SaaS pricing display elements that sell

The SaaS business model has claimed its success a while back, SaaS revenue is expected to reach $22 billion by 2015, this is a 52% increase from 2012. But SaaS pricing is still a subject of hot debate across software communities from all over the world. Since valuing your product right on the market is essential, check out our SaaS pricing guide to understand how to master this art. 

Fortunately, we can now see plenty of SaaS companies that are already standing firmly on their feet and showing off a successful and flexible pricing strategy behind their SaaSy success. Let's look at a few brilliant examples of successful SaaS pricing display elements that sell.

Value what...?

A product's value proposition is the attention grabber for a prospect. It's the element that attracts their attention and makes them interested enough to scroll down and check out what the company offers. A great example of a value proposition on the pricing page is from SalesForce. This company has several products on offer with different pricing plans and value props for each. We liked the value proposition for their Marketing Cloud product, "Turn connections into Customers for life", which is clear, short, and persuasive.

Free trial or no free trial?

Most of the successful SaaS products are B2B by design, they offer the best flexibility when it comes to scalability and implementation costs. Nevertheless, they usually don't come cheap. Enterprises often have to pay for one year upfront, and it's hard to decide which solution to go. Especially in today's tough economy. The best way to communicate value to your prospects is by offering free trials for every plan. This way, you can start building close relationships with the indecisive folks and segment them efficiently. Your SaaS free trial users are also a great source for sales-qualified leads for your sales team. However, something needs to be said here. Free trials need to be a time-bound strategy. If you build SaaS using open source, you have fewer investments to recover, as this is a more cost-effective development method. Otherwise, you need to be able to sustain this financial effort. However, regardless of the free trial debate, you are in, ensuring global SaaS compliance is a must.

Only annually... Seriously?

A huge lump of cash... well, not literally. An annual plan for a business solution can look like a big commitment for many companies out there. Lately, we see a lot of companies who have become more flexible when it comes to their pricing plans. They remove friction related to commitment. Offering a more expensive yet month-to-month plan is a great choice, as many teams are reluctant to pay a large chunk of money upfront. New Relic folks have made a tiny switch that lets the prospects compare between month-to-month and annual pricing plans. Check it out

annual pricing

No commitment comes at a price

Another element that deserves attention is that the Enterprise plan doesn't have a price tag. This is because more and more companies are currently offering custom solutions to larger buyers. The sales team can tailor a package according to the prospect's needs and budget size. It's also a great opportunity to communicate value to the prospect and sell more features.

The common sense behind user behavior

Many companies, including SaaS Open Source start-ups try to go with innovative solutions to stand out from the crowd. But if we look at how the prospects choose the product they are willing to commit to, it turns out it's not all rocket science. The truth is that prospects navigate between several competing products simultaneously. They extract value from a feature list. They want to open several tabs and choose the option that offers the most for the lowest price. Simple as that. Offering a comprehensive list of features and an additional full feature comparison chart between editions is a great conversion driver. Don't forget to peek at your competition to stand out from them and deliver the best value perception to your prospects. As an example, ZenDesk is doing a great job in clearly communicating what a buyer gets for his buck.

We are showing here just a fraction of this list, it's indeed pretty long. Another token of appreciation of their job is navigation. The pricing plan names keep following you as you scroll, which greatly facilitates navigation and improves clarity.

The plans

We are all familiar with the well-known 3-5 pricing plan strategy with the most profitable one standing out. Let's talk about something new. The guys from Hubspot have taken an unorthodox approach and are... winning.

They offer only 3 predefined plans, against the already traditional 5. The prospecting visitor can get a detailed feature comparison chart to compare packages. Take a look at their CTA (call-to-action). It doesn't say BUY NOW, it doesn't say TRY FOR FREE. A prospect can customize his price, by tailoring the package to his own needs and wallet. This is what we call self-service pipeline done right! The whole process is very fluid and extremely user friendly. It offers the user a step-by-step guide to help tailor the right package for his business.

Last but not least, notice that the offer shows multiple conversion paths featuring a phone number, a demo request, and a free marketing assessment. Combined, their pricing display is unbelievably clear and user-friendly. All this price transparency and user price customization significantly increase the comfort level for the prospect before getting a bill for the whole year upfront. Just brilliant.

Which example did you like the most in the article? Do you have other brilliant examples that could complete this story?
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