The most overlooked skill in pricing and packaging
Plus: PricingSaaS just got an upgrade.
Welcome back to Good Better Best!
Every time I give a pricing recommendation, I get the same response:
“Can you show me an example?”
In a dark art like pricing, real examples cut through the noise. Even if the logic is bulletproof, people want to SEE it.
So this week we made a big update to the PricingSaaS Community — introducing data and tools that allow PricingSaaS members to:
Search 500+ SaaS pricing pages
Scroll through 2+ years of pricing history
Bookmark favorite examples
Build a personal pricing swipe file
The best part? It’s all free — and this is just the beginning.
Create your free account to get started.
PS. If you have ideas for tools that would make pricing and packaging easier, hit reply and let me know. We’d love to add it to our (rapidly) growing product roadmap.
On to this week’s post.
Great pricing isn’t a science — it’s a muscle 💪🏼
Temporal’s Head of Monetization shares how top SaaS teams overcome pricing inertia in this podcast recap. From sales-led SKU tests to packaging for segmentation, Tomas “Tlo” Lorinc reveals how to build a culture of pricing iteration, without fear or over-engineering. If you’re a founder, product leader, or pricing owner, this post is your push to start flexing your pricing muscle.
The most overlooked skill in pricing and packaging 👀
Any time I see two things in one week that point to the same truth, I feel compelled to write about it.
First, Michael Hoy tagged me in a LinkedIn post about Replit’s new pricing model. At a high level, Replit updated its Agent pricing to introduce more nuance—pricing now varies by task based on level of effort.
What stood out most wasn’t the pricing itself, but the rationale behind the change. If you can’t read the excerpt above, here’s the key snippet:
The original $0.25-per-checkpoint pricing was designed for the early version of Replit Agent, which mostly handled short, simple tasks that took a consistent amount of time. As the agent has evolved, it’s now capable of solving both more complex, longer-running tasks (like self-debugging errors) and smaller tasks more quickly. As a result, the time and effort involved in addressing user requests can vary significantly from request to request.
My first reaction: this won’t be the last email Replit sends about pricing changes. As their agents evolve, so will their pricing and packaging.
When I was consulting at ProfitWell, most clients revisited pricing every few years—if that. Some teams have sped things up, but many still operate on that slower cadence. That’s not going to work in the AI era, where the pace of change will force teams to iterate faster.
Soon after Michael’s tag, I listened to Scott Woody’s interview with Giang Hoang, Director of BizOps at Zapier. Giang captured this shift better than I could. When Scott asked her for a pricing and packaging hot take, she delivered the following gem. It’s long, but worth the read:
There's probably an area that pricing and packaging leaders often underestimate. Change management and messaging to customers is really pivotal with all pricing and packaging changes. Even when a pricing change is a clear win for the customer and you're giving them added value, if it's not clearly communicated, it's going to cause confusion or resistance. As an example, we saw that when we merged our Starter and Pro plans. While we gave customers more features at no extra cost, we still saw a spike in support tickets, because customers just weren't sure what changed, or what it meant for them, or how it was a net benefit. Every pricing and packaging change really requires thoughtful messaging, timing, and iteration. We lean heavily on our product marketing teams and our pricing and packaging teams to build-in thoughtful rounds of feedback from customers, review messaging multiple times, test different branding, and make sure all of our news has the right storytelling.
It’s a masterclass in how to think about pricing communication, and this mindset will only get more important as pricing becomes more dynamic.
With that in mind, here are a few of my favorite examples of effective pricing change communication:
Announce it Early (HubSpot, January 2024)
HubSpot consistently gives customers a heads up—often announcing pricing changes months in advance. That lead time helps customers understand the impact and plan accordingly.
Make it Easy (Zapier, April 2024)
Zapier nailed this with a “Plans at a Glance” breakdown from CEO Wade Foster: who each plan is for, what changed, and what it costs. This is the same change Giang mentioned above — a helpful reminder that even the clearest announcements will spark questions. That’s not a bad thing. It means customers are engaged.
Use Visuals (Clay, May 2024)
When Clay rolled out major pricing changes, they used rich visuals to explain the update—tables, comparisons, internal memos. These brought clarity and context, making a complex change feel digestible.
The most important thing is building the muscle. Pricing communication doesn’t need to be perfect every time, but it should be thoughtful, consistent, and grounded in a clear philosophy. The more reps you get, the smoother it becomes.
How we can help when you’re ready
Pricing questions? Join the free PricingSaaS Community to get answers to your burning pricing questions, and access to our free data and tools.
Looking to level up? Check out our Resource Center for links to pricing and packaging research, webinars, and our free online course.
Working on pricing? Our SaaS Pricing Assessment delivers a clear roadmap to smarter pricing and packaging in 30 days.
love this, strong +1 on messaging re pricing. when we upped pricing at slack, we spent outsized energy on messaging and it went off mostly without a hitch