How I decided on three different pricing models for my three projects

Hello, everyone! I’m Misha Krunic, the founder of multiple projects, most notably Price2Spy, JustLikeAPI, and my newest project – BotMeNot.

I can say that I’m pretty active on IndieHackers and lately I’ve been noticing one recurring theme in the discussions. New (and even some established) makers seem to have issues with their free trials & pricing models.

This is why I’ve decided to write an article regarding how I went about creating both of these for all three of my most significant projects. Hopefully, it will help some of you get a clearer picture of what you should and shouldn’t do.

Let’s start with Price2Spy, which is based on a monthly subscription and has a 30-day free trial. Then we’ll go over JustLikeAPI, where we offer custom quotes to every client, with currently 14-days free trial (but we’re most likely going to change this to 30, as well). Finally, we’ll end with BotMeNot, my most recent project, which is still in its beta stage, and is based on a credit system.

Price2Spy’s Pricing Model – Monthly Subscription

Price2Spy is one of my first and longest-running projects. Also, it’s currently my largest project, with over $200K MRR. The growth that it has seen can partially be attributed to its pricing model and our approach to it.

In order to explain Price2Spy’s pricing model properly, I’ll have to briefly go over what Price2Spy is first. Price2Spy is a price monitoring tool – meaning, in essence, that it scrapes data numerous (and I mean it when I say numerous) eCommerce pages and gathers data from them. It’s not just pricing data, though. It can gather information such as currency, product variations on the same page, stock levels, seller info (on marketplaces such as Amazon), and much more.

What's important to remember is that every scraping task is different when it comes to how difficult it is to perform. Also, websites’ protection against scraping varies from site to site. This is something that we had to take into consideration when deciding on our pricing model for Price2Spy. This especially applies to websites that have a very advanced protection solution implemented.

Over time we also kept adding additional features to our service. For example, capturing screenshots, repricing (direct & indirect), matching services, etc. Such features required a lot of work to be implemented (and some still do). Therefore, we had to add an additional cost for them.

An important thing to note here is that most of these additional features are optional. We are aware that not all of our clients have a need for them. This is why they come in a form of an add-on. It’s totally up to our clients to decide if they have a need for them.

In essence, our approach is based on trying to understand our clients as best as we can. This means understanding their needs, listening to their feedback, and adapting our service to it. Whenever a client suggests a new feature for Price2Spy, and we decide to implement it, that client gets to use it free of charge.

Now, let’s go into some specifics regarding the Price2Spy pricing model. At the core of it all is the number of desired URLs a client wants to monitor. Based on this number, we have Small (S - 100), Medium (M - 500), Large (L - 2K), Extra Large (XL - 10K), and 50K options. For a number of URLs above 50K, we offer an enterprise solution, that is custom made for the needs of that specific client.

Furthermore, we have 2 tiers of subscriptions – Basic and Premium. The difference is that for the Premium version we offer a couple of additional features (separate from the previously mentioned add-ons). Those are

• API access,
• capturing additional data,
• increased price check frequency,
• increased number of customizable automated reports,
• the option to have multiple user accounts, and
• increased Stealth Traffic limits.

An important note here is that both Basic and Premium tiers have the same default size variations, that are dependent on the number of monitored URLs. As previously mentioned those are S, M, L, XL, and 50K.

What we wanted to accomplish was to make our prices go up as the number of monitored URLs and the complexity of the monitored sites increase. This means that our smaller clients, who don’t have many competitors and whose competitors aren’t investing in advanced scraping defenses, don’t need to pay for the premium services (since they have no need for them). On the other hand, our larger clients, do have the need for additional features. We think that higher subscription tiers are suitable for them and based on their feedback, it seems that we are right.

Besides the subscription fees, we offer additional one-off services that we charge for only once when they’re performed. One such service is manual product matching and it’s performed by one of our dedicated teams.

You may now be wondering – what happens if there’s a client who needs something in-between? Something that’s not precisely covered by our default price plans. To this we say – we’re adaptable. We are ready to come up with custom quotes for specific clients’ needs. Whether it’s additional functionality or a very specific number of monitored URLs, we try to adapt.

To conclude, I would define Price2Spy’s pricing model is a kind of Matrix, which can be best seen on price comparison page.

JustLikeAPI – Custom Quotes

Similar to Price2Spy, justLikeAPI is a data scraping service, but more oriented towards qualitative data. To be more precise, justLikeAPI collects reviews on various platforms (currently, we monitor over 45 platforms) and in multiple industries, and delivers them to the client. However, these platforms are very different when it comes to the difficulty of gathering reviews.

This is why it’s very difficult to have a pricing plan with predefined tiers & fees. Also, besides the platform’s complexity and bot protection levels, we also take into account how frequently does the client wants review checks to be performed, how many reviews need to be scraped, is there any additional info that the client wants to gather, etc.

Due to the aforementioned specifics, we had to opt for a slightly different approach. In the case of JustLikeAPI, we have a minimum offer of 49.95 USD, but every client of ours gets a custom quote. Just to give you a feeling, the largest client is paying close to 15 000 USD per month. That quote is based on the complexity of the desired website, it’s effectiveness in fighting bots, the frequency of checking for reviews, and other factors that make the process easier or more difficult. This goes to show that each justLikeAPI’s scraping task is a story of its own.

What is similar, though, when comparing Price2Spy and JustLikeAPI is that payments are (by default) done in monthly installments. However, there is an option for our clients to pay the whole value of their subscription for a specified period upfront. In those cases, we usually offer them a discount. The value of the discount is based on the period the client wants to cover with the upfront payment. It varies from 1 to 6 months.

The bottom line with JustLikeAPI’s pricing is that due to the nature of the tasks it performs, every client receives a custom offer. With this type of pricing model, it’s very important to be as transparent with your clients as possible. This means letting them know what the offer is based on, and how different matters that we have to consider contribute to the final offer. This creates a sense of trust between us and the clients and enables us to form and nurture long-term relationships.

BotMeNot – Credit System

There’s one underlying factor that is common for all three services of ours, and you may have already noticed it. It’s that when deciding on pricing, we always start with what we know & with what we can predict/control. In the case of BotMeNot – there’s actually not much that we can predict.

Our clients will be able to perform tests on any website they choose. We can’t know upfront how complex these websites will be, but what we do know is the complexity of the tests that can be performed. There are three preset bot protection tests that BotMeNot can run, and there’s also a possibility of creating a custom bot protection test if the need arises.

Let’s first talk about our three preset tests. We currently have Starter, Light, and Smart bot protection tests. They all work by simulating bot behavior. What makes them different is what type of behavior are they trying to mimic. For example, the Starter bot mimics older generation bots, while the Light and Smart bot protection tests mimic the newer ones.

To be more precise, they vary in terms of how many different UserAgents they use, from how many different IP addresses they visit the selected website, how many times do they hit a URL from the selected website, and how good are they at impersonating real human visitors. Increasing any of these parameters means increased complexity of the test and increased costs.

Even though BotMeNot is still in the Beta stage, our preliminary prices are 1 credit for the Starter test, 5 credits for the Light test, and 25 credits for the Smart bot protection test. A single credit costs $10, but we’re thinking about offering discounts to clients who decide to run tests automatically. For example, if someone decides to run a Smart bot test weekly – in the first week, it will cost them 250 credits. However, every weekly Smart bot protection test after that will have a 65% discount. This means 87.5 credits each week. The discounts will vary depending on the interval chosen for performing tests.

As you can probably see by now, BotMeNot’s pricing model differs from Price2Spy’s and JustLikeAPI’s quite a lot. One of the most notable differences is that you can use BotMeNot as a one-off service (even though it’s not recommended) and that paying in installments is completely optional.

We wanted to give this option to our clients because we think that there are multiple approaches to improving your bot protection. Somebody does it weekly, somebody does it monthly, somebody does it in an even larger interval. This is why we decided it would be best to remain flexible and reflect that flexibility in our pricing model too.

Conclusion

There’s this contradictory thing with most pricing models. It’s very difficult to get them right the first time, but it’s one of the things that you want to experiment with the least. I think that decisions regarding changes to your pricing model need to be made very cautiously.

If there’s one thing related to pricing models that I’ve learned from working on all these projects it’s that your pricing model will depend on the type of service you are providing.

For any SaaS makers, a monthly subscription model is one of the first things that comes to their mind. And the thing is, in a large number of cases, it can turn out to be the right choice. However, there are cases where different models may work.

The bottom line is - your pricing model is at the core of your business. It’s (at least) as important as the development, marketing, and other types of work you do. This is why it’s crucial that you dedicate enough resources to coming up with a solid pricing plan.

I hope this article was helpful and if you’re interested in hearing more about how we approach our free trials, check out (this article)[insert link here]!