SaaS pricing and monetization: what I learned pricing real products

Price a SaaS product by whatever grows when your customer gets more value from it. For a tool everyone on a team uses every day, that's the number of users; for a platform that carries a customer's revenue, it's that revenue; for a content library, it's a subscription with included users and limits.

That's the question I start every pricing model with, and the products I've worked on answered it differently. KpiClock, a team management product that replaces Hubstaff, BambooHR and DocuSign, is priced per user in two tiers. I said no to pricing each module separately, so the value of one product shows in one number.

Find Your Calm, a booking platform for wellness operators, has two tiers: a free marketplace listing that brings operators in, and paid booking software priced by the revenue each operator manages. The number of users and locations doesn't change the price, and there's no commission on bookings, because operators take payments through their own payment accounts. I designed that model, and the client approved it.

Mark Andrews Creative sells a subscription library in tiers, monthly or yearly. Each subscription includes 5 users, extra users are billed per the tier's conditions, and each tier has monthly download limits. Courses come with the subscription and are also sold separately, and physical goods are single purchases, all from one account and one checkout. The business now makes over $1M a year on the platform.

None of these posts contains a price. They're about the model: what it charges for, who it suits, where it backfires, and what it costs the product to support it.

The guide starts with the main SaaS pricing models side by side, then goes deep on one: why Find Your Calm prices by revenue, with a free tier and no commission. Then it turns to how people buy, with Mark Andrews Creative's one checkout for subscriptions, courses and physical goods. It ends with the platform the pricing runs on: the scope, access rules and limits behind an e-learning platform with a shop.