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Ask HN: Is 15$ per year for a niche subscription based service too high?

4 points by raooll ↗ HN
Is 15$/year for a niche subscription based service too high? Suggest a niche tool or service for which you are likely to pay 15$/year ? Please name already existing service that you are using for which you pay under 20$/year.

14 comments

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Someone1234
You're asking the wrong question.

How niche something is is largely irrelevant, because your userbase is self selecting and doesn't care how many of them there are.

What you should be asking is: Does the value of what you're offering justify $15/month?

Also consider doing A/B testing at different price points. Just ask for email addresses, and see if you get a different response rate at $5/10/15/20.

raooll
I am not asking 15$/month its 15$/year. What kind of service would you be ready to pay 15$/year.
soneca
When talking to customers, pay more attention in the answers they want to give than in the answer you wanted to get.

The parent assumed it was by month and not mentioned it being too high. So, clear indication that $15/year do not present itself as too high without any further info.

And as other commented, it might be too low. As I type this, both primary comments have very valuable advice. Listen to them and not to the fact they did not answered your proposed question.

raooll
Thank you, I see what you are trying to say here.
sjs382
Is it too high? It might be too low.

I pay $20/year for feedbin.com, under a grandfathered rate. The currently advertised price is $30/year.

I'd probably be willing to pay $5/month (or more? I haven't given it much thought) for this service, though. I use it a lot, and I use it almost every day.

What are you thinking about building?

thenomad
My hunch would be, unless it's very low-effort for you or potentially reaches a massive customer base, that the price is too low rather than too high.

I can think of almost no services I pay that amount per year for. I can think of several I pay that amount per month for, though.

raooll
Can you list down some of them please ?
thenomad
Browserstack, VPSes from a couple of companies, a private forum in the filmmaking market, just off the top of my head.

Of course, most of those are business rather than personal expenses.

Seem to recall my Spotify account comes in around $15 too.

palidanx
I think the behavior depends if you are marketing a consumer based product or enterprise based product. In the beginning when I launched my enterprise SAAS product, it was vastly underpriced. I gradually increased the price to market rates (about 4x higher) and the subscription rate has been the same.
codegeek
The service may be niche but pricing should depend on various factors like complexity, value add compared to competitors (you always have competitors even in niche) and ultimately the most important: Who is your target audience ?

$15/Year could be too low in fact for a niche. You may as well charge $15/Month and still get enough clients. In fact, I will say that a good niche service should be high margin because it is most likely low volume. This means your pricing should be high enough to create a sustainable business.

Going back to the Target Audience point. Imagine this. You have a service/product that for some reason can be sold to both students and large educational institutions. Would you ask a student to pay $15/year ? Perhaps you won't get much luck there. Would you be able to get $15/Year from an institution ? Most likely. Of course, sales cycle may be longer and it may take a bit more time to get the institution on board. But they may easily pay you $15/Month or even $100/Month if they get enough value out of what you are offering.

saluki
As others have said . . . too low.

It's not even going to be worth accepting the subscriptions at that price. If it involves any amount of effort to setup/maintain/pay for hosting etc.

look for an idea that is in the $29/mo+ range.

It's more about the value than just the lowest price.

If it's too low you won't make money unless it happens to be really hands off.

brudgers
If $15 per year is too high, just round it down to zero and analyze the business from there. On the other hand, if it's a niche product that has monetary value the price should probably be several hundred a year or more.

Good luck.

max_
Users will _only_ consider your pricing to be expensive(ridiculous) if the service you provide does not match up to the money they are paying.

The easiest way to know if you are being too expensive(ridiculous) is to compare your own service and pricing, to the average service and pricing provided by companies offering a similar service.

I pay $19.29 annually for the Pro Finch VPN service.. https://www.finchvpn.com/order/?product=pro I don't think the pricing is high,,, i find it very fair compared to the service i get.