Need help thinking through pricing strategy
Hi all,
Challenge
This is probably an excuse, but I'm hesitant to really start sharing my app because I'm not sure what kind of pricing structure I'll use in the future and I imagine that this is a blocker for potential users.
Because to really benefit from my app, you need to invest quite a significant amount of time and information.
If in the future the pricing changes in a way that you find unacceptable - then you feel like you are losing all that you put in to the app. Better to avoid it in the first place.
That's what I IMAGINE people might be thinking. This may or may not be true.
About Lurnby
Lurnby is a read-it-later tool for digital content like web articles, newsletters, and ebooks. By making it easy to highlight and take notes, it supports active reading and learning. It also makes it simple to start reviewing your content with spaced-repetition. That way, when you read something, you’re more likely to remember it.
What I'm thinking
Currently I don't have pricing for the app. It's free to use and I accept recurring donations via Patreon.
I have 2 paying customers giving me appx $10/month, meanwhile I am paying appx $30/month to keep the app running at this point.
So this isn't particularly sustainable and if I get more free users, then the prices will go up eventually.
I have two difficulties.
- Determining how to price the tiers
- Determining acceptable prices.
I guess the first is more important than the second because I can figure out acceptable prices later, it's more important to understand how my pricing will be structured.
I've considered:
- Having a limit for added content (books, articles, notes)
- Having a limit for storage (size of all your info on the platform)
- Having pricing by feature ( more advanced features for higher tiers)
The first one seems most logical, but I'm not sure what the limit should be and what content should factor in.
Books, web articles, pdfs become "articles"
"articles" contain "highlights"
I also plan to add "Posts" for essays or notes you write.
Should I set a count on all of them? And have that limit?
i.e. free tier = 500 articles, highlights, posts?
1000 = $X / month
2000 = $XX / month?
For context, you can see a screen shot of my own app usage which is quite heavy. I've been using it daily for almost a year.
Thoughts?
I'm a solo founder so no one to really bounce my thinking off of so was hoping to get some perspective from the community.
Conundrum
I created Lurnby because I couldn't find anything similar and affordable when I needed it. So I'm pretty adamant about the app having a robust free tier. But I also need a reason for people to pay.
