I Tried Every SaaS Pricing Framework and Still Got Ghosted by Buyers

A real talk about how ‘value-based pricing’ sounds lovely until you have to explain it to a CFO who only sees churn

There comes a point in every SaaS founder’s life where you realize that your beautifully color-coded pricing page - complete with whimsical tier names like “Startup Hero” and “Enterprise Titan” - is about as persuasive as a soggy salad.

We’ve been there. We’ve flirted with freemium. We’ve tangoed with tiered. We’ve tried to whisper sweet nothings about “per-seat pricing” into the ears of skeptical buyers. And still, the ghosting. Oh, the ghosting. As if we’d dropped a cold outreach email titled “quick question about your tech stack.”

So this isn’t one of those smug, retrospective “how we 10x’ed MRR with a pricing revamp” case studies. It’s a confessional. A wry stroll through the well-trodden (and pothole-ridden) world of SaaS pricing models - what we tried, what flopped, and why most frameworks are less of a silver bullet and more of a decorative butter knife.

The Seduction of Value-Based Pricing

Where theory swipes right, and reality ghosts you immediately after the first date

Value-based pricing. The darling of every pricing consultant’s deck. “Price based on the customer’s perceived value,” they say. Sounds poetic, right? Like haikus for revenue models.

Until you’re on a Zoom call with a procurement lead who asks, “Why are you charging $80K per year for something that costs $12 to run on AWS?”

Suddenly, you're doing interpretive dance to justify ROI. You’re conjuring vague promises of “operational efficiencies” and “future insights” while your buyer mentally compares your quote to three offshore vendors and a six-pack of Red Bull.

Here’s the dirty secret: most SaaS buyers don’t want to feel value - they want to count it. If you can’t directly tie your pricing to line items they already track (revenue generated, costs saved, hours shaved), you’re dead in the water.

And no, pointing to a McKinsey report doesn’t count. Unless you're pricing to impress MBAs at a golf retreat.

Tiered Pricing: The Illusion of Choice

“Pick your plan!” they said. And buyers clicked away faster than a pop-up ad on a recipe site

Next, we fell for tiered pricing. Bronze. Silver. Gold. Maybe “Platinum” if we were feeling spicy. You know, the ol’ “Good, Better, Best” gambit lifted from airline seating charts and espresso machines.

But here’s the thing: most B2B buyers don’t want to play Pricing Sudoku. They want clarity. And when your plan names are cute but your feature sets are cryptic, they bail.

We watched users hop on our pricing page, spend an average of 28 seconds squinting at our comparison grid, and vanish without a trace. No chat, no sign-up, no “Let’s Talk” button click. Just bounce rates and heartbreak.

Turns out, the cognitive load of deciphering what’s included in “Growth+” versus “Pro Maxx” was just too much to bear. Especially when all they wanted to know was, Can I export to Excel and will this survive my InfoSec review?

Usage-Based Pricing: Sexy Until You Realize You’ve Built a Billing Nightmare

Spoiler: metered pricing isn't a business model, it’s a full-time job

Inspired by Twilio and Snowflake, we dipped our toes into usage-based pricing. Charge per API call. Per GB. Per data point queried. Let the market decide, we said.

Then came the audits. CFOs demanding itemized bills. Customers rage-emailing us because their invoice spiked after one enthusiastic intern ran 400 reports on Friday afternoon.

Our CS team became part-priest, part-math tutor.

And internally? Our revenue projections started looking like a cardiogram on a caffeine drip. It was like betting your ARR on weather patterns. Sure, it could scale like crazy - but it could also flatline the moment a customer figures out how to “optimize their usage” (read: use your product less and pay you nothing).

Lesson? Predictability is underrated. Unless your customer base is entirely made up of fellow developers who love metrics the way toddlers love iPads, usage-based pricing will make your sales team cry.

Per-Seat Pricing: Obvious, Popular, Deeply Flawed

Just like reality TV. Everyone watches it. Everyone complains about it.

Charge per user, call it a day. It’s clean, it’s familiar, it gives sales teams something to negotiate on (“we’ll give you 30 seats for the price of 25!”).

But the cracks show fast.

First, your customers start seat-hoarding. They create shared logins, rotate usage, or straight-up lie about headcount. Second, your product starts getting penalized for adoption. The more teams want to use it, the more expensive it becomes, which kills virality faster than a mandatory two-hour onboarding call.

Worst of all? When you’re selling into enterprises, “user” becomes a philosophical term. Is a user the manager who logs in once a quarter? The analyst who lives in the dashboard? The VP who insists on weekly emailed PDFs?

It’s pricing by anthropology.

Freemium: The Trojan Horse with No Exit Strategy

It gets you in the door. Then it refuses to leave, order anything, or tip the waitstaff.

Freemium felt like the ultimate growth hack. “Let them try it for free. They’ll love it. They’ll convert!”

Reader, they did not convert.

They used the free version. They told their friends. They emailed support when it broke. But they never, ever paid.

Worse, freemium users tend to anchor your perceived value near zero. You can’t exactly drop a $30K proposal after someone’s been using your tool for free for six months and hasn’t noticed it’s missing half the features.

And once your product is seen as “the free one,” good luck clawing your way upmarket. It’s like trying to sell premium bottled water after positioning yourself as the free tap in the park.

Custom Pricing: A Time Sink Disguised as Strategy

It’s all fun and games until you’ve spent 3 weeks negotiating with Legal for a $5K deal

Custom pricing is where all hope goes to die. Sure, it sounds strategic. “We tailor our pricing to each client’s needs.” It whispers enterprise. It promises flexibility.

It also creates chaos.

Your sales cycles balloon. Your product team has no clue what features actually matter. Your support team ends up servicing ten different “enterprise plans,” each with weird one-off promises someone made to close the deal.

And don’t even get us started on quoting. You end up building a spreadsheet so complex it qualifies as a second product.

Also: CFOs hate it. No procurement officer wants to be told they’re “special” unless there’s a standardized rate to compare it to. Custom = opaque. Opaque = risky. Risky = no PO.

So What’s Left?

Let’s be honest: Pricing is more about psychology than math

We eventually realized that no framework alone was going to save us. Because the best pricing isn’t formulaic - it’s contextual.

It’s not just about cost recovery or market benchmarks. It’s about your customer’s budget politics. Their purchasing habits. Whether their fiscal year ends in March or December. Whether procurement holds the purse strings or product ops does. Whether your value is obvious - or needs a 40-slide deck and a demo circus.

So we stopped worshipping frameworks and started doing what actually worked:

• Anchoring price to an existing budget line. If they already spend $500K on customer success tooling, we’re not trying to sell ours as “new spend” - we’re helping them shift existing spend.
• Building ROI calculators they actually believe. Not marketing fluff. Real spreadsheets with inputs they control.
• Offering one clear plan with optional upgrades. Simplicity sells. Confusion doesn’t.
• Knowing our anti-personas. Some buyers will always churn, argue, or ghost. We stopped chasing them.

And most importantly? We started treating pricing not as a set-it-and-forget-it decision, but as a living, breathing conversation.

Pricing Is a Product

Treat it like one.

Test it. Interview your users about it. Track pricing page drop-offs. Ask people what confused them. Watch what they click. Hell, even record them rage-scrolling through your comparison table.

Because pricing is part of your product. Not just a number at the end of a contract.

Ignore it, and your brilliant SaaS idea will spend its days collecting newsletter signups instead of revenue.

The “Will This Work?” Scorecard

A totally biased, based-on-our-scars take on pricing models:

Pricing Model	Buyer Happiness	Sales Predictability	CAC Payback	Our Sanity
Value-Based	3/5	2/5	4/5	2/5
Tiered	4/5	4/5	4/5	3/5
Usage-Based	2/5	1/5	3/5	1/5
Per-Seat	3/5	4/5	4/5	3/5
Freemium	1/5	1/5	1/5	5/5 (for vibes)
Custom Enterprise	4/5	2/5	5/5	1/5

TL;DR

If you’re looking for the “right” SaaS pricing framework, you won’t find it in a blog post or a consulting slide deck. You’ll find it by shipping something, watching buyers flinch, and iterating until they stop ghosting you.

Because pricing isn’t a spreadsheet exercise - it’s a relationship test.

Still tweaking your pricing page at 1AM? You’re not alone. We’ve been there. Give us a shout if you want a second pair of eyes (and fewer pricing-induced panic attacks).

1. What is value-based pricing in SaaS and why is it so difficult to implement?
Value-based pricing means charging customers based on the perceived value your product delivers rather than costs or market benchmarks. It sounds strategic in theory but is notoriously hard in practice because “value” is subjective. Different stakeholders perceive value differently - what the end user loves, the CFO might question. Without credible, quantifiable ROI evidence, it often feels like hand-waving, especially in B2B where budget scrutiny is tight.

2. Why do SaaS buyers ghost after seeing pricing pages?
Buyers often ghost when pricing lacks clarity, feels unpredictable, or doesn’t map to their internal budget categories. Overly complex tiers, hidden costs, or ambiguous value metrics trigger friction. If they can’t immediately grasp what they’re paying for or justify it to procurement, they’ll abandon the process rather than seek clarification. Most prefer self-serve clarity over a drawn-out negotiation.

3. Is tiered pricing still effective for SaaS in 2025?
Yes, but only when executed with restraint. Effective tiered pricing clearly distinguishes customer types (e.g., startup, mid-market, enterprise) and aligns features with real usage patterns. Overloading tiers with arbitrary feature splits or branding fluff creates decision fatigue. The goal should be to guide, not confuse. Well-crafted tiers also allow sales to upsell naturally as usage or company maturity grows.

4. What are the biggest risks of usage-based (metered) pricing for SaaS products?
Usage-based pricing introduces volatility - both for revenue forecasting and customer perception. Customers may underuse the product to avoid high bills or become upset when a usage spike leads to unexpectedly large charges. Internally, it complicates billing infrastructure and makes CAC payback murkier. For non-technical buyers, it feels unpredictable and hard to budget against, making it harder to sell in traditional procurement cycles.

5. When does per-seat pricing work, and when does it backfire?
Per-seat pricing works best when individual user access correlates with value - like collaboration or productivity tools. But it breaks down in scenarios where teams share accounts, usage is uneven, or value is derived collectively. It can also stifle adoption, as buyers become reluctant to add users due to cost. Modern buyers expect pricing to encourage - not penalize - virality and scale.

6. Why is freemium rarely successful for B2B SaaS?
Freemium often fails in B2B because it attracts users who love “free” but don’t convert. These users increase support costs and skew product feedback. Worse, freemium anchors perceived value low, making it harder to justify enterprise pricing later. Unless the product has strong network effects or a clear path to upgrade (e.g., Slack or Notion), freemium can become a costly distraction.

7. How should startups approach custom pricing without creating chaos?
Startups can offer custom pricing if they maintain guardrails - standard discount ranges, approved contract terms, and a core pricing architecture that doesn’t vary wildly. Customization should be tactical (bundling, onboarding, support tiers), not fundamental (redefining pricing logic per deal). Clear documentation and CRM discipline are key to preventing a Frankenstein pricing ecosystem that’s impossible to scale.

8. What makes a SaaS pricing strategy “defensible” in enterprise sales?
Defensible pricing ties back to metrics the buyer already uses - cost savings, increased output, risk reduction. It’s backed by real case studies, ROI calculators with editable inputs, and references from similar-sized companies. It avoids arbitrary markups and instead shows how pricing reflects usage or business impact. Buyers should feel they’re paying logically - not whimsically.

9. How often should a SaaS company revisit its pricing model?
At least once every 12–18 months, or sooner if product-market fit evolves, new competitors enter, or key metrics like CAC, churn, or expansion revenue shift meaningfully. Pricing is not static - it should evolve alongside product capabilities, buyer sophistication, and customer segmentation. Even minor adjustments (like renaming plans or changing feature splits) can yield significant results.

10. What are signs your pricing model is holding back growth?
High bounce rates on your pricing page, long sales cycles, frequent discounting, or prospects saying “too expensive” without trying the product are all red flags. Other signs include low expansion revenue, poor freemium-to-paid conversion, or misaligned revenue per customer segment. If pricing becomes a regular sales objection or is hard to explain in under 60 seconds, it’s likely time for a rethink.