When and how to raise your SaaS prices

You set a low price so someone would say yes. They said yes. Now support tickets stack up, the product is better than the number on the page, and every new signup still lands on a fee that made sense when you were scared. Raising prices is not a rebrand. It is fixing a number that no longer matches the work.

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) wrote in 2006 that you can probably stand to charge more. The essay still holds in 2026. Founders undervalue software because they live with the warts. Customers do not price your regret. They price whether the problem gets smaller when they pay you. Indiecity is for one person or a team under twenty. You do not need a pricing committee. You need a clear signal, a new number for new buyers, and a human way to talk to the people already on the old plan.

Charging more is the default, not a stunt

In his SaaS pricing notes, McKenzie is blunt: most SaaS starts underpriced. Technical founders extrapolate from “code is free to me,” so the business lands near free. A $9 or $19 habit only works if you have Netflix-scale distribution. You do not. Cheap buyers write more support mail for less money. Higher prices pull in people who treat the product like work.

Raising is the same idea applied after you already have customers. You are not inventing greed. You are stopping a discount that only made sense when you were begging for proof. If you never put a serious number on the page to begin with, how to price a SaaS when you have no competitor to copy is the first pass. This guide is for the day after that number looks too small.

You can probably stand to charge more.

When to raise: signals, not a calendar

Do not wait for an anniversary. Wait for proof the current price is wrong for the business you are running.

• People buy with little or no pushback on price, and you still drown in support relative to what they pay.
• A new kind of buyer gets clearly more value than your earliest users (agency vs solo freelancer, team vs hobbyist).
• You underpriced on purpose to get the first ten, and those ten already paid. The public number was a temporary crutch.
• You keep saying yes to custom work that the plan does not fund.
• You would not want ten more customers at this price tomorrow.

Ignore polite praise as a pricing signal. Payment, usage, and support load are signals. “Interesting” is not. If twenty named people will not pay anything, you may have a product or buyer problem, not a raise problem. That path is still getting your first 10 paying customers without ads, not a bigger number on an empty checkout. If you already have a small list, set the next number from those ten and message each person by name.

Raise new customers first

The simplest move: change the public price. Anyone who has not paid yet sees the new number. Anyone already paying stays on their plan until you decide otherwise. McKenzie calls this out as logistics, not a campaign. Raising for new customers is easy to run. Raising for everyone at once is a trust project.

When Ruben Gomez re-priced Bidsketch, agencies that had been on a low plan moved toward a higher plan that matched the value proposals created for real firms. McKenzie’s writeup highlights a best practice: early adopters stayed on their too-cheap plans. That lock-in is a marketing expense that buys goodwill. You keep the people who took a risk when the product was rough. You stop selling the whole market at the early-friend price.

Server Density’s pricing change is the other public case McKenzie walked through. They moved from a fiddly per-server formula toward clear plans. Existing customers could stay on the old model. New visitors saw the new grid. The cohort on plans brought more revenue than the old variable pricing. The point for you is not their exact dollars. The point is: new price for new people, grandfather for the ones already in, measure what new buyers do.

How to tell existing customers

If you only change the public page, say so to current customers anyway. Silence feels like a secret. A short note is enough: your plan is safe, new customers pay more, thank you for being early.

If their price will rise later, treat it like a product change. Give a real effective date. Say the old number and the new number. Say what they keep. Offer a reply path that a human reads. Do not bury the date in a footer. Do not pair the raise with a fake emergency.

Hi [name]. Quick update: new customers now pay [new price] for [plan or outcome]. Your account stays at [current price] on [plan name]. You took a chance on us early, and that rate is locked. If anything looks off on billing, reply to this email and I will fix it myself.

Hi [name]. On [date], [plan name] moves from [old price] to [new price] per [month/seat/year]. You keep [what stays the same]. I am raising the price because [one plain reason: support cost, product scope, who the product is for now]. If this plan no longer fits, reply before [date] and we will sort a downgrade, export, or cancel without drama. Thank you for paying us this far.

I hear you. The new number is [price] because [outcome] now costs us [support / scope] that the old price does not cover. I can keep you on [old price] until [date], or move you to [smaller plan] at [price]. What works on your side?

Lead with the facts, not a novel. One reason is enough. “We charged too little for the work we do now” is honest. A laundry list of features they never asked for sounds like spin. If you grandfather forever, say forever. If you give six or twelve months, put the end date in the first note and again before it hits.

Pick the new number without a fake formula

There is no universal “raise by X percent” that ships as truth. Blogs love fake percentages. Your job is narrower. Write the substitute cost again: time, tools, a person, a missed appointment, a failed proposal. Put the new price under that mess and above the support you actually provide. Say it out loud. If you whisper it, you do not believe it yet. If you also collect yearly, raise the monthly number first, then reset the yearly total. Do not hide a raise inside a discount.

1. Write who the product is for now, not who it was for on day one.
2. Write what they already spend or lose without you.
3. Write the monthly (or yearly) number you want new buyers to pay.
4. Check it against support load: can you afford this customer at this price?
5. Update the public page and every sales script the same day.
6. Decide in writing: grandfather forever, grandfather until a date, or raise everyone with notice.

McKenzie’s Appointment Reminder lesson still helps the story you tell: anchor the fee next to a cost the buyer already understands (one missed appointment, one agency proposal, one hour of a hire). You are not defending a percentage. You are defending a trade.

A two-week raise plan

1. Day 1. List signals: how often people push back on price, support hours, who is buying, whether you want more customers at the old price.
2. Day 2. Write the new public price and the rule for existing accounts. One page. No committee deck.
3. Day 3. Update the site, checkout, proposals, and any pin in your outreach notes.
4. Day 4. Email current customers. Grandfather note or dated raise note. Use their names when the list is small.
5. Days 5 to 10. Sell only at the new number. Track sent, replied, booked, paid for new leads.
6. Day 14. Keep the price if new buyers still pay. If everyone vanishes at the number, you moved past the value they feel, or you are talking to the wrong buyer. Fix segment or packaging before you cut the number in panic.

Keep a simple log: old price, new price, who is grandfathered, effective dates, and every reply that is not a template. That log is how you avoid accidental double charges and angry surprises.

What to stop doing

• Waiting for a perfect feature launch so the raise “feels earned.”
• Surprising people on the renewal morning with a higher charge and no prior note.
• Inventing an industry-wide percentage raise because a thread said so.
• Apologizing so hard that you undo the raise in the same email.
• Raising only in your head while the public page still shows the old number.
• Keeping a joke plan that attracts the customers you cannot afford to support.
• Copying a consumer subscription on your personal card as the ceiling for B2B software.

Then the number matches the work

Raising SaaS prices is ordinary once you have proof. New buyers get a number that matches the outcome. Early buyers get honesty, time, and often a locked rate. McKenzie’s charge-more line still holds. Your job is the calendar, the email, and then stopping the number you picked when you were scared.

When a raise works and you will put your name on how you told customers, send us the story. When the product is real, put it on the map. You can join Indiecity while you run the two weeks. That gives you people to talk to. It does not send the note for you.

Update the page. Write the customers. Charge the number the work deserves.