How are best-in-class SaaS companies selling their subscription plans? We studied 50 top-rated companies to learn more. Read our insights below or explore the data yourself in our interactive table.
Majority List Real Numbers
Eighty percent of companies use real numbers on their pricing pages, even if not all prices are listed. Some companies use a “starting at” price, while others are very detailed about what a user can expect to pay per month or year.
Advertising an annual discount is still popular, as is showing both monthly and annual pricing.
As Companies Scale, Their Subscription Offerings Get More Complex
“Keep it simple” is common advice for SaaS companies, but the subscription offerings for most best-in-class companies are far from simple.
When it comes to the number of tiers or subscription plans offered, there is no normal. The median number of plans is 3.5; however, we saw a range from zero to 23 plans. And figuring out this number was sometimes subjective, because it’s not always clear what should be considered a plan.
Many companies have a different set of tiers or plans for each service set they offer, and 46% of the companies utilized multiple pricing pages or tabs separated by service type or market segment. Overall, we found that plan offerings become more complicated depending on how a company decides to scale.
We looked at each website using a VPN to change our location and browser settings to change our preferred language.
We looked for page localization in four regions:
Thirty-eight percent of the pricing pages we studied changed the default language displayed for any of the four regions or used a region or language selector. And 20% either changed the default currency or used a currency selector.
Per internal research, we found that FastSpring users displaying local currencies and payment methods convert at twice the rate of those who don’t.
While the most common social proof is a block of logos from major customers, nearly 40% have no social proof at all.
We see that very well-known companies like Shopify, HubSpot, and Mailchimp tend to not include any social proof features, as well as well-known enterprise-level companies like ADP and SAP.
What features help convert? If popularity is any indication, FAQs is a clear winner. It’s also common to include different certifications or awards that vary by industry. What you show on your pricing page will probably be a mix of standard components (such as FAQs) that are useful in any market and features that are specific to your market.
Majority Utilize a Product-Led Growth Strategy
Product-led growth (PLG) strategies are common-place among best-in-class SaaS companies, with 78% promoting either a free plan or a free trial.
Forty-eight percent offer an always-free plan, whether it’s to single users or smaller teams, or with limited usage or features. Only 26% of this segment encourage all users to start with the free plan option.
Although we suspect that a higher number of companies utilize a free trial, only 26% clearly promote it on their pricing page. It’s also often difficult to see how long the trial lasts.
Unclear Sales Processes
Even on best-in-class pricing and contact pages, it can be difficult to understand the sales process, especially for enterprise-level sales.
Twenty-two percent of the pricing pages use “Get Started” as the CTA for their medium tiers, and 50% use a version of “Contact Sales” for their enterprise-level tier. Even if you click on one of the buttons, it’s often not clear what you’re signing up for: whether you’re setting up a call, scheduling a demo, entering a free trial, etc.
While best-in-class companies might make it difficult to figure out the common sales process, the majority make it easy to talk directly to a sales rep using either chat bots or a phone number.
FastSpring helps SaaS and software companies grow faster. As a merchant of record, we take responsibility for every part of your payments process — including sales taxes, VAT, payment compliance, fraud detection, payment processing, localization — and more. Our goal? To free you from the complexity of payments, so you can get back to doing what you do best — building great software.
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