Pricing your first SaaS

Most first SaaS pricing is too low. Founders pick $5 or $9 because it feels safe, then find out that at that price they need hundreds of customers and a sales machine they don't have. Good SaaS pricing for beginners starts from the number you need each month and works backwards, with churn in the math from day one.

Start from the MRR you need

Pick a monthly goal. Say $3,000 MRR, enough to matter. Divide by your price and that's how many paying customers you need at the same time.

334 people is a real marketing problem. 62 is a list you can build one conversation at a time.

Churn is a treadmill

Customers leave. If 5% leave each month, then at 158 customers on the $19 plan you lose about 8 a month. You need 8 new customers every month just to stand still. If about 1 in 10 trial signups converts to paid, that's 80 signups a month to hold $3,000. Not to grow. To hold.

Same goal at $49: 62 customers, 5% churn is about 3 a month, so around 31 signups. Less than half the work for the same revenue. Try your own price, churn and goal:

Why cheap is harder than it looks

In my experience the cheapest plans churn the most. Someone paying $5 hasn't committed to anything, so they cancel the first month they don't log in. Support costs the same per person whether they pay $5 or $50. And a low price can make a serious buyer wonder if the product is a side project that will vanish.

A simple way to pick a first SaaS price

1. 1Find out what people pay today to solve the problem. That might be another tool, or it might be hours of their time.
2. 2Price at a fraction of that pain. If the problem costs them 4 hours a month, $29 is an easy yes for most people who bill their time.
3. 3Ship one plan. Tiers can come later, once you know which features people actually fight over.
4. 4Add an annual option once you have a few happy customers. It cuts churn and gives you cash up front.
5. 5Give your first customers a founder price and tell them it's locked in. It rewards the risk they took on you.

Your best pricing research is already on X

People post about what they pay, what they think is too much, and what they'd switch for. Search for "per month" or "/mo" next to your category and read. You'll learn more in an hour than from any survey.

When to change it

If nobody pushes back on price, it's probably too low. If everyone does, it's too high or you're talking to the wrong people. Some objections are healthy. Change the price for new signups only, and do it once you have at least 20 to 30 real conversations to judge by, not after three.

For what it's worth, KittyLeads runs on one plan: $29.99 a month, tax included, with a founder price for the first 200 customers. Having one plan made every sales conversation shorter. You can see it on the pricing section. If you're working on something small, the micro SaaS page has more on how this applies, and from $0 to $1k MRR turns your price into a customer count.