I've been working in the software industry for over 25 years. Pretty much my entire professional career (if you don't count that stint as a night clerk at Red Roof Inn).

Back in the late 1900s, when you sold software, you sold software. What your company produced was a large set of properly aligned bits (software). You then got those bits to your customers somehow (floppy disk, DVD, FTP, whatever). And, then those customers installed those bits on a computer of their choosing and if all went well, they'd get some value out of it. But, that wouldn't always happen. Often, they'd fail to ever install it and get it working. Or fail to learn it. Or fail to use it properly. Basically fail to get the value expected -- or the value promised, or sometimes any value. Ironically, the higher the purchase price was, the lower the chances of seeing success. History is replete with multi-million dollar software purchases that never saw the light of day. As an entrepreneur, this pains me. Most start software companies to make money, they start companies to solve problems.

Now, fast-forward to today. It's 2017. Many software companies are now Software as a Service (SaaS) companies. What they produce is the same as before: A large set of properly aligned bits (software). Only now, instead of shipping those bits off to the customer somehow, they "host" those bits on the customers behalf and off the benefit of that software as a service.

Makes sense, right?

Now, naive folks that are new to SaaS often make the mistake of thinking they're still selling software. They're not. Because...

SaaS = Success as a Service

If you're in the SaaS business, the only way to survive in the long-term is not to just deliver software. It's to deliver success. You have to actually deliver the benefit that the software is promised to provide. And, if the customer fails to get that benefit then you have failed. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

The reason for this new bar is relatively straight-forward. Back in the old days, you got paid for your software upfront and though you wanted your customer to succeed, and maybe even labored to help them succeed, if they didn't succeed, well, such was life and you moved on. Today, if the customer doesn't succeed, they cancel. In a month, in a quarter, in a year -- but eventually, they cancel. And, more likely than not, if they cancel, you've lost money. The math won't work.

So, to survive and thrive in the long-term, you can't sell software, or even access to software, you have to sell -- and deliver -- success.

Let me give you a concrete example and some lessons learned from my company, HubSpot, which provides marketing/sales software. HubSpot is a textbook SaaS company. We're about 10 years old, and we're now public [NYSE:HUBS].

Here's what we invest in (because it works):

1. Onboarding. If you help customers get started with your product, they are more likely to do so. Ideally, your software is so simple and intuitive and easy that customers just get up and running and succeed on their own. But, if you have a relatively broad or sophisticated product, customers will often need help. In those cases, onboarding works.

2. Education. HubSpot has HubSpot Academy, which is a team that helps educate people on inbound marketing. Interestingly, they don't just invest in HubSpot customers, they educate the broader marketing industry.

3. Community. HubSpot hosts inbound.org, an online community built for marketers. It allows them to find the best content (curated by the community itself), discuss topics of interest, post jobs and find jobs. It acts as the premier professional network for marketers. The community has over 200,000 members now.

So, why does HubSpot spend millions of dollars educating and supporting marketers? It's simple. because we've realized that our success depends on the success of our customers.

We've learned and accepted that we're building a "Success as a Service" company.

I've been working in the software industry for over 25 years. Pretty much my entire professional career (if you don't count that stint as a night clerk at Red Roof Inn).

Back in the late 1900s, when you sold software, you sold software. What your company produced was a large set of properly aligned bits (software). You then got those bits to your customers somehow (floppy disk, DVD, FTP, whatever). And, then those customers installed those bits on a computer of their choosing and if all went well, they'd get some value out of it. But, that wouldn't always happen. Often, they'd fail to ever install it and get it working. Or fail to learn it. Or fail to use it properly. Basically fail to get the value expected -- or the value promised, or sometimes any value. Ironically, the higher the purchase price was, the lower the chances of seeing success. History is replete with multi-million dollar software purchases that never saw the light of day. As an entrepreneur, this pains me. Most start software companies to make money, they start companies to solve problems.

Now, fast-forward to today. It's 2017. Many software companies are now Software as a Service (SaaS) companies. What they produce is the same as before: A large set of properly aligned bits (software). Only now, instead of shipping those bits off to the customer somehow, they "host" those bits on the customers behalf and off the benefit of that software as a service.

Makes sense, right?

Now, naive folks that are new to SaaS often make the mistake of thinking they're still selling software. They're not. Because...

SaaS = Success as a Service

If you're in the SaaS business, the only way to survive in the long-term is not to just deliver software. It's to deliver success. You have to actually deliver the benefit that the software is promised to provide. And, if the customer fails to get that benefit then you have failed. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

The reason for this new bar is relatively straight-forward. Back in the old days, you got paid for your software upfront and though you wanted your customer to succeed, and maybe even labored to help them succeed, if they didn't succeed, well, such was life and you moved on. Today, if the customer doesn't succeed, they cancel. In a month, in a quarter, in a year -- but eventually, they cancel. And, more likely than not, if they cancel, you've lost money. The math won't work.

So, to survive and thrive in the long-term, you can't sell software, or even access to software, you have to sell -- and deliver -- success.

Let me give you a concrete example and some lessons learned from my company, HubSpot, which provides marketing/sales software. HubSpot is a textbook SaaS company. We're about 10 years old, and we're now public [NYSE:HUBS].

Here's what we invest in (because it works):

1. Onboarding. If you help customers get started with your product, they are more likely to do so. Ideally, your software is so simple and intuitive and easy that customers just get up and running and succeed on their own. But, if you have a relatively broad or sophisticated product, customers will often need help. In those cases, onboarding works.

2. Education. HubSpot has HubSpot Academy, which is a team that helps educate people on inbound marketing. Interestingly, they don't just invest in HubSpot customers, they educate the broader marketing industry.

3. Community. HubSpot hosts inbound.org, an online community built for marketers. It allows them to find the best content (curated by the community itself), discuss topics of interest, post jobs and find jobs. It acts as the premier professional network for marketers. The community has over 200,000 members now.

So, why does HubSpot spend millions of dollars educating and supporting marketers? It's simple. because we've realized that our success depends on the success of our customers.

We've learned and accepted that we're building a "Success as a Service" company.

Confession: For the past several months I've been furiously coding away on a new project as part of HubSpot Labs. It's called GrowthBot. It's a chatbot for marketing and sales people -- and anyone looking to grow a company (like startup folks).

The launch has gone well, and my bot is currently happily handling thousands of messages. Things like "show me companies in california that use HubSpot" and "who are the top influencers about landing pages". GrowthBot can answer most of these, and thousands of others. So, overall, it's been a good day.

But, anytime bots come up in conversation (no pun intended), especially with media folks, people seem to frequently wander into the "are bots going to replace humans?" arena. Some wonder "will this bot cause people to lose their jobs?" I can't speak for all bots, but for GrowthBot, the short answer is no.

I'll explain with a visual:

 

The way I like to think about it is not, Human vs. Bot, but Human + Bot. The bot amplifies what you can do. The bot is an exponent.

It's not smart enough to write a blog post -- but it can tell you what posts about a particular topic people are sharing. You just ask: "what are the top posts this week on product marketing?"

It's not smart enough to automatically run a campaign to drive traffic to your website -- but it can answer questions about how your website traffic is doing. "How was organic traffic to the site last month?" And the bot also tells you how that compares to the prior month. You can compare results year-over-year (Yes, June is a slow month, but is this June slower than usual?)

It's not savvy enough to close a deal for you, but it can help you find potential customers by asking: "show me law firms in Boston that use Google Apps". (Assuming you're trying to sell SaaS software to law firms and are looking to find firms that are modern enough to use Google Apps).

So, you're still doing the creative, meaningful work.   GrowthBot is just making you better, stronger, faster. It gives you access to information you may not have had access to before. It can surface insights that you may not have come up with on your own.

By the way, it's completely free and easy-peasy to try out. Nothing to download. Nothing to install. No forms to fill out. No credit card required.

Just head over to http://growthbot.org and say hello. I'm not saying it is guaranteed to get you a promotion, but you never know. It may just put that small spring in your step and data in your head. 

 

 

Confession: For the past several months I've been furiously coding away on a new project as part of HubSpot Labs. It's called GrowthBot. It's a chatbot for marketing and sales people -- and anyone looking to grow a company (like startup folks).

The launch has gone well, and my bot is currently happily handling thousands of messages. Things like "show me companies in california that use HubSpot" and "who are the top influencers about landing pages". GrowthBot can answer most of these, and thousands of others. So, overall, it's been a good day.

But, anytime bots come up in conversation (no pun intended), especially with media folks, people seem to frequently wander into the "are bots going to replace humans?" arena. Some wonder "will this bot cause people to lose their jobs?" I can't speak for all bots, but for GrowthBot, the short answer is no.

I'll explain with a visual:

 

The way I like to think about it is not, Human vs. Bot, but Human + Bot. The bot amplifies what you can do. The bot is an exponent.

It's not smart enough to write a blog post -- but it can tell you what posts about a particular topic people are sharing. You just ask: "what are the top posts this week on product marketing?"

It's not smart enough to automatically run a campaign to drive traffic to your website -- but it can answer questions about how your website traffic is doing. "How was organic traffic to the site last month?" And the bot also tells you how that compares to the prior month. You can compare results year-over-year (Yes, June is a slow month, but is this June slower than usual?)

It's not savvy enough to close a deal for you, but it can help you find potential customers by asking: "show me law firms in Boston that use Google Apps". (Assuming you're trying to sell SaaS software to law firms and are looking to find firms that are modern enough to use Google Apps).

So, you're still doing the creative, meaningful work.   GrowthBot is just making you better, stronger, faster. It gives you access to information you may not have had access to before. It can surface insights that you may not have come up with on your own.

By the way, it's completely free and easy-peasy to try out. Nothing to download. Nothing to install. No forms to fill out. No credit card required.

Just head over to http://growthbot.org and say hello. I'm not saying it is guaranteed to get you a promotion, but you never know. It may just put that small spring in your step and data in your head. 

 

 

Late last year, I combed through the Montclare SaaS 250 — a directory of the biggest SaaS companies in the world — to find common trends in what I thought would be a significant dataset. As it turned out, 80% of the 250 biggest SaaS companies didn’t have a pricing page at all.

Expecting to find a set of data more representative of what I’m used to seeing around (essentially startups), I turned to a bigger sample, scraping information from the first 400 startups in AngelList’s ‘Trending’ category. Of the remaining 386 which hadn’t shut down, I found that startups are around twice as likely to show their pricing than their enterprise SaaS big brothers. In fact, 39% of the 389 startups I analysed had pricing clearly available.

As I looked at in that previous article, there’s often good reason behind hidden pricing, and, for the top 250 SaaS firms, that reasoning was mostly that they are selling to enterprise customers who thinking pricing is just a formality.

And, besides, enterprise SaaS is a more complex beast than self-service, or SaaS aimed at SMBs.

So, equipped with wider range of data to analyse, I set about to answer the question: How do the top 386 trending AngelList SaaS startups compare to the Montclare SaaS 250?

The study’s highlights

Here’s a quick overview of the main findings for my set of data from 386 AngelList trending startups:

39% have pricing publicly available The average number of packages is 3.5 44% sell the benefits on-page 84% organize prices low to high 9% organize prices high to low 59% list their enterprise package’s price as ‘Contact us’ 49% highlight a package with a contrasting CTA color The most common CTA is ‘Start free trial’ 63% offer a free trial 11% offer pricing on a sliding scale 85% of packages are named (‘Growth’, ‘Pro’, etc.) 6% offer a money-back guarantee 30% operate on a freemium model

The average number of packages is 3.5

In both the Montclare 250 and AngelList Trending data sets, the results are exactly the same: most SaaS companies offer between 3 and 4 packages.

In a recent article from Price Intelligently’s Patrick Campbell, he says that over-complicating and over-simplifying pricing is an equally terrible mistake. This is because complicated pricing can give buyers analysis paralysis, yet simple sliding scale structure built on a single value metric can stunt the company’s growth and kill any opportunities for upsells.

Additionally, research shows that 7 ± 2 is the maximum amount of objects an average human can hold in working memory. Because of this, it makes sense to limit your price points to just 3 or 4 significant choices -- unless the buyer makes a choice right then and there, they could easily forget some key details later on down the line.

This said, package count on the extreme end of the scale (Twitmusic’s 9 packages, for example), is often linked to a single value metric like number of Twitter followers, not a complex array of features.

53% Highlighted a package

Highlighting a package as popular or best value or simply putting it in a different color to the others is a technique SaaS companies can use to make the buyer’s decision easier, promote their most profitable package, or even to draw attention first to a higher priced package to make the others look cheap (more on that later).

However, just over half of the 386 analyzed startups chose to use this tactic. Why is that?

On Episode 271 of Startups For The Rest Of Us, where the hosts talk through my original 250 pricing pages analysis, Mike Taber has an answer for that. He says it could be because by listing 3 packages (the mode of packages offered), the price is naturally anchored in a low/medium/high setting, and there’s no need to highlight anything and sway the potential buyer away from a potentially more profitable plan.

Here’s an example of a pricing page where a package is highlighted:

44% Sell the benefits

One of the most striking things about looking at pricing pages in a vacuum (as in, without sometimes even knowing what the company does), is how disconnected from the rest of the site the page tends to be. While the landing page is often very benefit and social proof driven, it’s rare that the pricing page will list anything other than the features.

Surely it wouldn’t hurt to reiterate the reason the potential buyer is here in the first place. And, not to mention the fact that a common search query for SaaS companies is [company name] + [pricing]. Reiterating the benefits or employing any kind of copywriting tactics at all on the pricing page seems like an obvious, often-overlooked choice.

Here’s a great example from Rainforest, re-selling the benefits to reassure buyers once they find out the price is $10,000/month:

84% Organised packages low to high

Heatmaps show that visitors spend twice as much time looking at the left side of the page as they do the right.

With this in mind, 84% of SaaS pricing pages could be using one of these tactics:

The principle of least surprise: a UX axiom which says that the last thing a user wants to happen is for them to be confused. Since we’re used to reading left to right, and seeing a low-to-high structure, sticking to it can ease user discomfort. Price anchoring: A deliberately feature-light package on the left side could make package 2 or 3 look like an amazing deal compared to the price difference. For a non-SaaS reference, this is like when The Economist offered its print subscription as a decoy package:

However…

9% Organised packages high to low

In Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, he recounts an eternally relevant A/B test from the retail world staged in 1975.

In the experiment, salespeople offered potential buyers of billiard tables two choices: a $329 model and a $3,000 model. The usual tactics are to offer the lower priced model in hope that the customer isn’t scared away by hearing big numbers, but one week, instead of starting with the low-priced table and try to sell up, the salespeople changed their tactics to offer the $3,000 model first. What happened? An 81% increase in revenue from billiard tables.

The idea that it’s easier to “sell down” than it is to “sell up” (meaning that it’s a more effective strategy to start high and the reduce), is a strategy employed by only 9% of the analyzed SaaS companies and is a tactic that comes with high recommendations from SaaS pricing expert Lincoln Murphy.

Going back to the previous point about low-high pricing, however, the tactic of offering something first which seems inadequate could be equally as powerful.

Here’s an example of a high-low pricing page layout from Unbounce, a company which knows a thing or two about conversion optimization:

59% list one or more package’s price as ‘Contact Us’

By far the most common 4+ package layout is 3 priced packages and an enterprise package with the CTA of ‘Contact Us’.

For the minority of SaaS companies which show their pricing, the complexity of enterprise deals forces more than half of SaaS firms to leave their enterprise package pricing undisclosed.

As discussed in my previous article, there are plenty of good reasons to keep price hidden for enterprise deals, including:

Deals are too complex to price without fully understanding the needs of the customer Rigid pricing could blow the deal for companies used to getting discounts You don’t want to push $700k customers down the same track as $100k customers. By getting them on the phone, a suitably concierge approach can be taken Enterprise customers don’t care about the price anyway, just about the solution. Like how fancy restaurants don’t have pricing, hidden prices are an aesthetic that gives the aura of exclusivity. Enterprises are used to having to call for pricing, so the Principle of Least Surprise returns here again.

49% use a contrasting color for the CTA

You don’t want your CTA to be subtle. After all, it’s the only place you want visitors to click when they’re on your pricing page.

According to Unbounce, a rule of thumb for CTA color is to “look for the dominant hue of your page and pick its contrasting color for your call to action”.

There’s evidence to support this from the famous red/green A/B test carried out by Performable, which showed a 21% higher CTR on the red button which contrasted with the otherwise green page.

Here’s an example of a clear, contrasting CTA button on Nitro’s pricing page:

As you can see, the orange CTA sticks out because it's the top-of-the-funnel package they expect to get leads from. While the Premium package is highlighted, the efforts in the copy above the buttons are focused on getting visitors to test the free package.

The most common CTA is ‘Start free trial’

Unlike the SaaS 250 where the most common CTA copy was ‘Buy Now’, AngelList trending startups made references to ‘buy’ in their CTA copy less than 2% of the time.

As you’ll see, unlike the enterprise-focused SaaS 250, startups seem to be pushing self-service free trials instead of demos with sales staff.

Here is a rundown of the top 5 CTAs ordered by frequency:

Start free trial (25%) Sign up (14%) Try for free (14%) Get started (13%) Request a demo (6%)

And the top 5 words by frequency throughout the set:

Free (69) Trial (47) Start (39) Try (25) Get (23)

Another couple of data points about CTA copy: conforming to the true definition of a CTA, 95% of samples start with an imperative, like ‘try’, ‘start’ or ‘get’.

39% of samples are in title case, with the first letter of each word capitalized, while 38% are written in all caps.

While writing in all caps is frowned on (even amongst conversion-hungry copywriters), pricing pages are essentially a call-to-action in themselves, so drawing attention to where the visitor should go next is essential.

63% Offer a free trial

63% of both Montclare’s SaaS 250 and the 383 AngelList trending startups offer a free trial on their pricing pages, many as the only option to ease into the product.

When looking at the psychology of free stuff and risk reduction, it’s obvious why SaaS companies use this powerful tool as a way to get customers. And, as I’ll look at later, a probable reason behind why only 6% of the sample companies offer a money back guarantee.

Here’s what Accountable’s free trial offering looks like on their pricing page:

11% Present pricing on a sliding scale

For SaaS companies with a single value metric, like OnFleet’s tasks (a task being a single delivery or pickup of goods), presenting pricing on a sliding scale can remove the confusion that comes with showing visitors a formula like:

0–100 tasks: $X/task

100–200 tasks: $Y/task

etc.

In fact, to reduce friction, OnFleet’s pricing page shows both the formula and the slider, as well as anchors the price by showing tasks reducing in price tenfold with just a comparatively small increase in monthly task allowance.

For comparison, almost 3 times as many AngelList trending startups offer pricing on a sliding scale than the Montclare 250.

Here’s sliding-scale pricing done masterfully:

85% have named packages

While some SaaS companies choose to name their packages in relation to their price (with names like ‘Basic’, ‘Premium’, etc.), some grab the opportunity to target segments of their visitors and name the packages by who they’re for. Free packages are sometimes named ‘Hacker’, like in the case of Algolia. Enterprise packages are almost ALWAYS called Enterprise.

When looking at the brackets in between, however, it’s common to get packages targeted at businesses at specific stages of growth, for example, the pricing for AppView which includes plans for different office sizes:

6% Offer a money back guarantee

Since most SaaS startups offer customers a free trial, there’s not much need for a money-back guarantee which explains why so few companies list it.

According to Kissmetrics:

“[Money back guarantees are] so overused and average that unless your product is extremely valuable (like a car) or easy to return (commodity products, such as retail goods), then you’re going to have an incredibly difficult time overcoming an objection with this guarantee alone.”

Among the rare few which use it is Close.io — a company that’s no stranger to sales techniques. They even use it in conjunction with a 30-day free trial:

30% have a free package alongside paid packages

That’s right, only 30% of the 386 AngelList trending startups analyzed operate on a freemium model, with the vast majority of the rest relying on free trials. That said, that means that at 93% of the sample pages have some kind of free element, whether it’s a free package or a free trial.

According to Weekly Growth, early stage SaaS startups are best off with a freemium model because it is more likely to attract early adopters. Later on, however, with a larger customer base, the huge amount of free-only users can put a massive strain on your support staff, and may end up negatively impacting your business overall.

Here’s an example of Envoy’s pricing page with a free package on offer:

What are the differences, then, between enterprise and startup SaaS pricing pages?

The most striking difference is that a SaaS startup is almost twice as likely to show its pricing than an enterprise SaaS company.

For enterprise SaaS serving a larger amount of influential customers, it's probable that a lot of business comes from referrals and deals are done over the phone without a pricing page being necessary. This would explain why 80% of the SaaS 250 didn't have a pricing page.

As well as this, a comparison between the two data sets shows that enterprise SaaS reiterates the benefits on their pricing page 25% more often. Just like we saw Rainforest's pricing page earlier, it could be that enterprise SaaS's high-ticket products need to be justified to buyers because choosing one provider over another is a huge investment.

And finally, the last major difference is that startups are 19% more likely to have a mixture of priced and 'contact us' packages. Just because a SaaS company is a startup doesn't mean it can't serve enterprises and startups. So, by having both transparent pricing for smaller companies and a 'contact us' package, they appeal to both markets.

Well, it's been an eye-splitting three days spent inside spreadsheets and on pricing pages, so I hope you find this data interesting and it gives you an insight into the typical SaaS startup pricing pages.

This was a guest post from Benjamin Brandall. Ben is a content creator at Process Street. Find him on Twitter here.

Late last year, I combed through the Montclare SaaS 250 — a directory of the biggest SaaS companies in the world — to find common trends in what I thought would be a significant dataset. As it turned out, 80% of the 250 biggest SaaS companies didn’t have a pricing page at all.

Expecting to find a set of data more representative of what I’m used to seeing around (essentially startups), I turned to a bigger sample, scraping information from the first 400 startups in AngelList’s ‘Trending’ category. Of the remaining 386 which hadn’t shut down, I found that startups are around twice as likely to show their pricing than their enterprise SaaS big brothers. In fact, 39% of the 389 startups I analysed had pricing clearly available.

As I looked at in that previous article, there’s often good reason behind hidden pricing, and, for the top 250 SaaS firms, that reasoning was mostly that they are selling to enterprise customers who thinking pricing is just a formality.

And, besides, enterprise SaaS is a more complex beast than self-service, or SaaS aimed at SMBs.

So, equipped with wider range of data to analyse, I set about to answer the question: How do the top 386 trending AngelList SaaS startups compare to the Montclare SaaS 250?

The study’s highlights

Here’s a quick overview of the main findings for my set of data from 386 AngelList trending startups:

39% have pricing publicly available The average number of packages is 3.5 44% sell the benefits on-page 84% organize prices low to high 9% organize prices high to low 59% list their enterprise package’s price as ‘Contact us’ 49% highlight a package with a contrasting CTA color The most common CTA is ‘Start free trial’ 63% offer a free trial 11% offer pricing on a sliding scale 85% of packages are named (‘Growth’, ‘Pro’, etc.) 6% offer a money-back guarantee 30% operate on a freemium model

The average number of packages is 3.5

In both the Montclare 250 and AngelList Trending data sets, the results are exactly the same: most SaaS companies offer between 3 and 4 packages.

In a recent article from Price Intelligently’s Patrick Campbell, he says that over-complicating and over-simplifying pricing is an equally terrible mistake. This is because complicated pricing can give buyers analysis paralysis, yet simple sliding scale structure built on a single value metric can stunt the company’s growth and kill any opportunities for upsells.

Additionally, research shows that 7 ± 2 is the maximum amount of objects an average human can hold in working memory. Because of this, it makes sense to limit your price points to just 3 or 4 significant choices -- unless the buyer makes a choice right then and there, they could easily forget some key details later on down the line.

This said, package count on the extreme end of the scale (Twitmusic’s 9 packages, for example), is often linked to a single value metric like number of Twitter followers, not a complex array of features.

53% Highlighted a package

Highlighting a package as popular or best value or simply putting it in a different color to the others is a technique SaaS companies can use to make the buyer’s decision easier, promote their most profitable package, or even to draw attention first to a higher priced package to make the others look cheap (more on that later).

However, just over half of the 386 analyzed startups chose to use this tactic. Why is that?

On Episode 271 of Startups For The Rest Of Us, where the hosts talk through my original 250 pricing pages analysis, Mike Taber has an answer for that. He says it could be because by listing 3 packages (the mode of packages offered), the price is naturally anchored in a low/medium/high setting, and there’s no need to highlight anything and sway the potential buyer away from a potentially more profitable plan.

Here’s an example of a pricing page where a package is highlighted:

44% Sell the benefits

One of the most striking things about looking at pricing pages in a vacuum (as in, without sometimes even knowing what the company does), is how disconnected from the rest of the site the page tends to be. While the landing page is often very benefit and social proof driven, it’s rare that the pricing page will list anything other than the features.

Surely it wouldn’t hurt to reiterate the reason the potential buyer is here in the first place. And, not to mention the fact that a common search query for SaaS companies is [company name] + [pricing]. Reiterating the benefits or employing any kind of copywriting tactics at all on the pricing page seems like an obvious, often-overlooked choice.

Here’s a great example from Rainforest, re-selling the benefits to reassure buyers once they find out the price is $10,000/month:

84% Organised packages low to high

Heatmaps show that visitors spend twice as much time looking at the left side of the page as they do the right.

With this in mind, 84% of SaaS pricing pages could be using one of these tactics:

The principle of least surprise: a UX axiom which says that the last thing a user wants to happen is for them to be confused. Since we’re used to reading left to right, and seeing a low-to-high structure, sticking to it can ease user discomfort. Price anchoring: A deliberately feature-light package on the left side could make package 2 or 3 look like an amazing deal compared to the price difference. For a non-SaaS reference, this is like when The Economist offered its print subscription as a decoy package:

However…

9% Organised packages high to low

In Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, he recounts an eternally relevant A/B test from the retail world staged in 1975.

In the experiment, salespeople offered potential buyers of billiard tables two choices: a $329 model and a $3,000 model. The usual tactics are to offer the lower priced model in hope that the customer isn’t scared away by hearing big numbers, but one week, instead of starting with the low-priced table and try to sell up, the salespeople changed their tactics to offer the $3,000 model first. What happened? An 81% increase in revenue from billiard tables.

The idea that it’s easier to “sell down” than it is to “sell up” (meaning that it’s a more effective strategy to start high and the reduce), is a strategy employed by only 9% of the analyzed SaaS companies and is a tactic that comes with high recommendations from SaaS pricing expert Lincoln Murphy.

Going back to the previous point about low-high pricing, however, the tactic of offering something first which seems inadequate could be equally as powerful.

Here’s an example of a high-low pricing page layout from Unbounce, a company which knows a thing or two about conversion optimization:

59% list one or more package’s price as ‘Contact Us’

By far the most common 4+ package layout is 3 priced packages and an enterprise package with the CTA of ‘Contact Us’.

For the minority of SaaS companies which show their pricing, the complexity of enterprise deals forces more than half of SaaS firms to leave their enterprise package pricing undisclosed.

As discussed in my previous article, there are plenty of good reasons to keep price hidden for enterprise deals, including:

Deals are too complex to price without fully understanding the needs of the customer Rigid pricing could blow the deal for companies used to getting discounts You don’t want to push $700k customers down the same track as $100k customers. By getting them on the phone, a suitably concierge approach can be taken Enterprise customers don’t care about the price anyway, just about the solution. Like how fancy restaurants don’t have pricing, hidden prices are an aesthetic that gives the aura of exclusivity. Enterprises are used to having to call for pricing, so the Principle of Least Surprise returns here again.

49% use a contrasting color for the CTA

You don’t want your CTA to be subtle. After all, it’s the only place you want visitors to click when they’re on your pricing page.

According to Unbounce, a rule of thumb for CTA color is to “look for the dominant hue of your page and pick its contrasting color for your call to action”.

There’s evidence to support this from the famous red/green A/B test carried out by Performable, which showed a 21% higher CTR on the red button which contrasted with the otherwise green page.

Here’s an example of a clear, contrasting CTA button on Nitro’s pricing page:

As you can see, the orange CTA sticks out because it's the top-of-the-funnel package they expect to get leads from. While the Premium package is highlighted, the efforts in the copy above the buttons are focused on getting visitors to test the free package.

The most common CTA is ‘Start free trial’

Unlike the SaaS 250 where the most common CTA copy was ‘Buy Now’, AngelList trending startups made references to ‘buy’ in their CTA copy less than 2% of the time.

As you’ll see, unlike the enterprise-focused SaaS 250, startups seem to be pushing self-service free trials instead of demos with sales staff.

Here is a rundown of the top 5 CTAs ordered by frequency:

Start free trial (25%) Sign up (14%) Try for free (14%) Get started (13%) Request a demo (6%)

And the top 5 words by frequency throughout the set:

Free (69) Trial (47) Start (39) Try (25) Get (23)

Another couple of data points about CTA copy: conforming to the true definition of a CTA, 95% of samples start with an imperative, like ‘try’, ‘start’ or ‘get’.

39% of samples are in title case, with the first letter of each word capitalized, while 38% are written in all caps.

While writing in all caps is frowned on (even amongst conversion-hungry copywriters), pricing pages are essentially a call-to-action in themselves, so drawing attention to where the visitor should go next is essential.

63% Offer a free trial

63% of both Montclare’s SaaS 250 and the 383 AngelList trending startups offer a free trial on their pricing pages, many as the only option to ease into the product.

When looking at the psychology of free stuff and risk reduction, it’s obvious why SaaS companies use this powerful tool as a way to get customers. And, as I’ll look at later, a probable reason behind why only 6% of the sample companies offer a money back guarantee.

Here’s what Accountable’s free trial offering looks like on their pricing page:

11% Present pricing on a sliding scale

For SaaS companies with a single value metric, like OnFleet’s tasks (a task being a single delivery or pickup of goods), presenting pricing on a sliding scale can remove the confusion that comes with showing visitors a formula like:

0–100 tasks: $X/task

100–200 tasks: $Y/task

etc.

In fact, to reduce friction, OnFleet’s pricing page shows both the formula and the slider, as well as anchors the price by showing tasks reducing in price tenfold with just a comparatively small increase in monthly task allowance.

For comparison, almost 3 times as many AngelList trending startups offer pricing on a sliding scale than the Montclare 250.

Here’s sliding-scale pricing done masterfully:

85% have named packages

While some SaaS companies choose to name their packages in relation to their price (with names like ‘Basic’, ‘Premium’, etc.), some grab the opportunity to target segments of their visitors and name the packages by who they’re for. Free packages are sometimes named ‘Hacker’, like in the case of Algolia. Enterprise packages are almost ALWAYS called Enterprise.

When looking at the brackets in between, however, it’s common to get packages targeted at businesses at specific stages of growth, for example, the pricing for AppView which includes plans for different office sizes:

6% Offer a money back guarantee

Since most SaaS startups offer customers a free trial, there’s not much need for a money-back guarantee which explains why so few companies list it.

According to Kissmetrics:

“[Money back guarantees are] so overused and average that unless your product is extremely valuable (like a car) or easy to return (commodity products, such as retail goods), then you’re going to have an incredibly difficult time overcoming an objection with this guarantee alone.”

Among the rare few which use it is Close.io — a company that’s no stranger to sales techniques. They even use it in conjunction with a 30-day free trial:

30% have a free package alongside paid packages

That’s right, only 30% of the 386 AngelList trending startups analyzed operate on a freemium model, with the vast majority of the rest relying on free trials. That said, that means that at 93% of the sample pages have some kind of free element, whether it’s a free package or a free trial.

According to Weekly Growth, early stage SaaS startups are best off with a freemium model because it is more likely to attract early adopters. Later on, however, with a larger customer base, the huge amount of free-only users can put a massive strain on your support staff, and may end up negatively impacting your business overall.

Here’s an example of Envoy’s pricing page with a free package on offer:

What are the differences, then, between enterprise and startup SaaS pricing pages?

The most striking difference is that a SaaS startup is almost twice as likely to show its pricing than an enterprise SaaS company.

For enterprise SaaS serving a larger amount of influential customers, it's probable that a lot of business comes from referrals and deals are done over the phone without a pricing page being necessary. This would explain why 80% of the SaaS 250 didn't have a pricing page.

As well as this, a comparison between the two data sets shows that enterprise SaaS reiterates the benefits on their pricing page 25% more often. Just like we saw Rainforest's pricing page earlier, it could be that enterprise SaaS's high-ticket products need to be justified to buyers because choosing one provider over another is a huge investment.

And finally, the last major difference is that startups are 19% more likely to have a mixture of priced and 'contact us' packages. Just because a SaaS company is a startup doesn't mean it can't serve enterprises and startups. So, by having both transparent pricing for smaller companies and a 'contact us' package, they appeal to both markets.

Well, it's been an eye-splitting three days spent inside spreadsheets and on pricing pages, so I hope you find this data interesting and it gives you an insight into the typical SaaS startup pricing pages.

This was a guest post from Benjamin Brandall. Ben is a content creator at Process Street. Find him on Twitter here.

I'm doing an "Ask Me Anything' (AMA) session on Product Hunt tomorrow (Tuesday, Feb 23rd, 2016 at 10 am PST, 1pm EST).  

Would love for you to sign-up early, because I'm insecure, egotistical and I want to impress Ryan Hoover.  Would love for a decent number of people to sign-up.  Or an indecent number would be even better.  350 have signed up already (before this blog post was published).  Here's the link again.  

As the name implies, folks are allowed to pretty much ask me anything, and short of something that will land me in jail (do not pass GO, do not collect $200) or harm someone else, I'm going to do my best to answer everything.

Here are the questions I'm hoping I won't get asked...

1. How does it feel, personally, to have the HubSpot stock price drop so much in the past several weeks?

2. How much weight have you gained in the past 2 years?  Does it have anything to do with HubSpot being public?

3. What do you think about competitor [X] -- aren't they just awful?

4. Is there a diabolical, grand master plan behind inbound.org?  Why is HubSpot investing millions of dollars in this?

5. What do you and your wife talk about at the dinner table?

6. Should I buy HubSpot stock right now?  Would you buy stock if you were me?

7. Do you secretly covet Rand Fishkin's lovely beard/fashion-sense/wife?

8. How many actual computers are in your house right now?

9. What did you think of the latest Star Wars movie?

10. What's the super-secret thing you're working on at HubSpot right now that most people at HubSpot don't even know about?

11. Are you and Ryan Hoover (founder/CEO of Product Hunt) actually twins? If not, why does it seem that way?

On the other hand, there are a few questions that I think would be fun/relevant/legal:

1. I hear you really like the Amazon Echo.  What's the strangest thing you use it for on a regular basis?

2. Are you going to write another book -- if so, what's it going to be about?

3. How many domain names do you personally own?  What do you do with them?  What are your favorites?

4. Is it true that you had lunch with Seth Godin and asked him what he thought about the term "inbound marketing"?

5.  Were you and Scott Brinker (of Marketing Tech Landscape fame) classmates at MIT?  What's he like?

6. How many marketing strategists does it take to change a light bulb?

Remember, you can not ask questions by leaving a comment below.  You have to ask them at the Product Hunt LIVE AMA with Dharmesh Shah

Hope to see you there.  It should be fun!

 

I'm doing an "Ask Me Anything' (AMA) session on Product Hunt tomorrow (Tuesday, Feb 23rd, 2016 at 10 am PST, 1pm EST).  

Would love for you to sign-up early, because I'm insecure, egotistical and I want to impress Ryan Hoover.  Would love for a decent number of people to sign-up.  Or an indecent number would be even better.  350 have signed up already (before this blog post was published).  Here's the link again.  

As the name implies, folks are allowed to pretty much ask me anything, and short of something that will land me in jail (do not pass GO, do not collect $200) or harm someone else, I'm going to do my best to answer everything.

Here are the questions I'm hoping I won't get asked...

1. How does it feel, personally, to have the HubSpot stock price drop so much in the past several weeks?

2. How much weight have you gained in the past 2 years?  Does it have anything to do with HubSpot being public?

3. What do you think about competitor [X] -- aren't they just awful?

4. Is there a diabolical, grand master plan behind inbound.org?  Why is HubSpot investing millions of dollars in this?

5. What do you and your wife talk about at the dinner table?

6. Should I buy HubSpot stock right now?  Would you buy stock if you were me?

7. Do you secretly covet Rand Fishkin's lovely beard/fashion-sense/wife?

8. How many actual computers are in your house right now?

9. What did you think of the latest Star Wars movie?

10. What's the super-secret thing you're working on at HubSpot right now that most people at HubSpot don't even know about?

11. Are you and Ryan Hoover (founder/CEO of Product Hunt) actually twins? If not, why does it seem that way?

On the other hand, there are a few questions that I think would be fun/relevant/legal:

1. I hear you really like the Amazon Echo.  What's the strangest thing you use it for on a regular basis?

2. Are you going to write another book -- if so, what's it going to be about?

3. How many domain names do you personally own?  What do you do with them?  What are your favorites?

4. Is it true that you had lunch with Seth Godin and asked him what he thought about the term "inbound marketing"?

5.  Were you and Scott Brinker (of Marketing Tech Landscape fame) classmates at MIT?  What's he like?

6. How many marketing strategists does it take to change a light bulb?

Remember, you can not ask questions by leaving a comment below.  You have to ask them at the Product Hunt LIVE AMA with Dharmesh Shah

Hope to see you there.  It should be fun!

 

HubSpot has had a pretty good run.  Went from zero to IPO.  What's not known is how unlikely the story of our success is.

II gave a talk at the 2016 SaaStr Conference hosted by Jason Lemkin.  The slides and full video from the talk are included below, with some quick notes on a few of the topics covered. 

Here's me presenting what turned out to be the most popular slide (more on this idea at the end of the article).

 Here is the full deck from Slideshare.

Note: There are some pre-roll videos, and my segment starts at about the 3 minute mark.

HubSpot has had a pretty good run.  Went from zero to IPO.  What's not known is how unlikely the story of our success is.

II gave a talk at the 2016 SaaStr Conference hosted by Jason Lemkin.  The slides and full video from the talk are included below, with some quick notes on a few of the topics covered. 

Here's me presenting what turned out to be the most popular slide (more on this idea at the end of the article).

 Here is the full deck from Slideshare.

Note: There are some pre-roll videos, and my segment starts at about the 3 minute mark.

Working on a startup?  Have a 800 pound gorilla you're trying to disrupt?  That's awesome.  But here's a tip:  Don't talk about disrupting them.  

The first rule of disruption is: You do not talk about disruption. 

 Why is this so important?  Why shouldn't you declare to the world (and the tech press) that you're going after the big kahuna?  Doesn't the media love a great David and Goliath story?

There are my reasons.  I'm going to keep this simple:

1. In just about all cases, to successfully disrupt a large incumbent, your best case scenario is that they completely ignore you and what you're doing.  This allows you to (quietly) build the thing you need to build without too much intervention.  

Here's the script:  "Don't mind us, we're just over here working on something tiny.  We're not worth your time. You're much better off focusing on your best customers and driving your profit margins up."  (This is pretty much the story that plays out in Clayton Christensen's "Innovator's Dilemma", which if you haven't read, stop what you're doing and do that right now).

2. You want the incumbent to act "rationally", because an emotionally fired-up incumbent will come try to crush you simply out of spite and ego.  They may not succeed  in crushing you -- but in the process, they can certainly cause a lot of pain.  And, responding to their actions will distract you from that whole disrupting thing you're trying to do.

3. One of the keys to disruption -- which usually happens from below is that your product/offering has to be inferior in some critical way.  The fact that what you have doesn't meet the needs of the existing customer-base is what makes it easier for the incumbent to ignore you.  If you start talking about how you're going to disrupt -- you're probably going to wind up trying to convince the world why your product is not really inferior but even better for customers than the existing, leading alternative.  That sounds like a good thing -- but it's not, because you shouldn't, in the beginning, be trying to create something that's "better" than what exists.  Chances are, if you do that, you'll do something incremental and you take the incumbent on, on their home turf.  Turns out, they're really good at playing that game (there's a good chance they invented the game).  You should be working on something dramatically simpler, cheaper or lighter.  

Don't start out trying to build something better for the entrenched company's existing customers.  That's not your goal -- your goal is to create something "good enough" for customers the incumbent doesn't care that much about.  If their best customers wouldn't laugh at the ludicrous lack of capability in what you're building -- you're probably doing disruption wrong.  Go back and read Innovator's Dilemma (again).  

OK, so when should you talk about this awesome disrupting you're doing?  

Ideally, in the past tense:  Think:  "We've disrupted...", not "we are disrupting".  Next best choice?  When the path is clear and the outcome is more or less inevitable.

Until then, be heads-down and quietly just do the work.

 

Working on a startup?  Have a 800 pound gorilla you're trying to disrupt?  That's awesome.  But here's a tip:  Don't talk about disrupting them.  

The first rule of disruption is: You do not talk about disruption. 

 Why is this so important?  Why shouldn't you declare to the world (and the tech press) that you're going after the big kahuna?  Doesn't the media love a great David and Goliath story?

There are my reasons.  I'm going to keep this simple:

1. In just about all cases, to successfully disrupt a large incumbent, your best case scenario is that they completely ignore you and what you're doing.  This allows you to (quietly) build the thing you need to build without too much intervention.  

Here's the script:  "Don't mind us, we're just over here working on something tiny.  We're not worth your time. You're much better off focusing on your best customers and driving your profit margins up."  (This is pretty much the story that plays out in Clayton Christensen's "Innovator's Dilemma", which if you haven't read, stop what you're doing and do that right now).

2. You want the incumbent to act "rationally", because an emotionally fired-up incumbent will come try to crush you simply out of spite and ego.  They may not succeed  in crushing you -- but in the process, they can certainly cause a lot of pain.  And, responding to their actions will distract you from that whole disrupting thing you're trying to do.

3. One of the keys to disruption -- which usually happens from below is that your product/offering has to be inferior in some critical way.  The fact that what you have doesn't meet the needs of the existing customer-base is what makes it easier for the incumbent to ignore you.  If you start talking about how you're going to disrupt -- you're probably going to wind up trying to convince the world why your product is not really inferior but even better for customers than the existing, leading alternative.  That sounds like a good thing -- but it's not, because you shouldn't, in the beginning, be trying to create something that's "better" than what exists.  Chances are, if you do that, you'll do something incremental and you take the incumbent on, on their home turf.  Turns out, they're really good at playing that game (there's a good chance they invented the game).  You should be working on something dramatically simpler, cheaper or lighter.  

Don't start out trying to build something better for the entrenched company's existing customers.  That's not your goal -- your goal is to create something "good enough" for customers the incumbent doesn't care that much about.  If their best customers wouldn't laugh at the ludicrous lack of capability in what you're building -- you're probably doing disruption wrong.  Go back and read Innovator's Dilemma (again).  

OK, so when should you talk about this awesome disrupting you're doing?  

Ideally, in the past tense:  Think:  "We've disrupted...", not "we are disrupting".  Next best choice?  When the path is clear and the outcome is more or less inevitable.

Until then, be heads-down and quietly just do the work.