Building in public - Initial pricing model for Marukatte

Pricing is a tricky topic even for seasoned entrepreneurs I guess. No wonder Shashi and I spent multiple days to come up with our initial pricing plan for marukatte.

3 tiered pricing

The choice to introduce a three-tiered pricing model came naturally, mirroring a common approach in SaaS, balancing accessibility with advanced features. 🌟

Crafting each tier

The next challenge was to define (features, price) what goes into each tier. We boiled it down to 2 main insights.

1. Understanding Our Customers We realized our users are at different stages - some just starting with a few products selling through Instagram and WhatsApp, and others scaling up, needing sophisticated tools to manage their growing online presence. The former, characterized by their smaller product range and simpler operations, necessitate basic yet powerful tools. Features like creating a no-fuss shopping site or transforming their product catalog into a professional PDF will be valuable to them. These latter, those in the midst of scaling and having manage a broader online footprint with their expanded product lines and complexity, demand a suite of sophisticated features. These for instance include bulk price updates across platforms, tailored marketplace SEO enhancements etc.
2. Balancing Our Costs and Value: Our expenses, particularly the infrastructure costs like storage, AI services etc. scale with our service usage. So for instance, the number of products in the catalog is a parameter to consider. Depending on the stage of the journey the customer is in, their needs and consequently the value they derive from the product would be different. Keeping both our costs and the value customer derives in perspective, we wanted to ensure each tier is sustainable for our users and for us.

Naming the tiers:

Naming the tiers was harder than planned. We wanted the names to be non-enterprisey (no standard, professional etc.) and reflect the spirit of the tier.

The initial pricing model

We’ve mapped out our tiers with these thoughts in mind. You can check out what we’ve crafted at our pricing page.

Your thoughts?

We're on this journey to build and refine openly, and your insights are a crucial part of this process. Whether you've navigated similar challenges or have thoughts on aligning product offerings with customer needs, would love to hear from you. #BuildingInPublic #SaaS #Entrepreneurship