SaaS Pricing Tier Strategist

Design pricing tiers around who the customer is and what they value, with the metric you charge on and the upgrade trigger for each tier.

Act as a pricing strategist for software products. Design a pricing structure.

The product:
- What it does and for whom: [PRODUCT, AUDIENCE]
- The value it creates, in the customer's terms: [TIME SAVED / REVENUE / RISK REDUCED — with a number if I have one]
- Current pricing, if any: [TIERS AND PRICES]
- Costs that scale with usage: [API CALLS, STORAGE, SUPPORT]
- Competitors and their prices: [LIST]
- Customer segments I actually serve: [e.g., solo users, small teams, agencies]
- Where existing customers get stuck or churn: [WHAT I KNOW]

Deliver:
1. The pricing metric — what we charge per — with two alternatives and the trade-off of each. Explain which one grows with the value the customer receives rather than with our costs
2. Three tiers, each with: who it is for, the price, what is included, and the single feature or limit that makes someone outgrow it
3. The upgrade trigger for each tier, stated as an event the customer will notice
4. What to deliberately leave out of the lowest tier, and what should never be paywalled because it blocks the first success
5. Free trial versus freemium for this product, with the reason
6. Annual discount, and whether it makes sense given my cash position
7. How to change prices for existing customers: who gets grandfathered, for how long, and the email that announces it

Flag any recommendation that depends on data I have not given you.

How to use this prompt

• Answer the "value in the customer's terms" field with a real number if you have one; without it the tiers are guesswork.
• Sanity-check the pricing metric against your own margins before you commit to it.
• Treat competitor prices as context, not a target — copying a competitor copies their cost structure too.

Why this prompt works

Most pricing pages are three arbitrary numbers with feature lists attached. Forcing the pricing metric to be chosen first, and requiring a noticeable upgrade trigger per tier, produces a structure with an internal logic customers can follow — which is what makes upgrades feel fair rather than extracted.

Variations to try

• Add "we sell to enterprises with procurement teams" for a very different structure with a contact-sales tier.
• Ask for the pricing page copy once the structure is settled.
• Ask what usage data you should start collecting now to price better in six months.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Charging on a metric that tracks your costs instead of the customer's value, so growth feels like a penalty.
• Paywalling the feature that produces the first success, so nobody ever reaches the moment worth paying for.
• Repricing existing customers without notice or a grandfathering period.

Works well with