Test SaaS Pricing Without VC (and Keep Customers)

Most bootstrapped founders don’t have a “pricing runway.” If you guess wrong, you don’t just miss a quarter—you risk payroll (even if payroll is just you) and the motivation to keep going.

That’s why pricing and positioning decisions matter more when you’re doing US startup marketing without VC. You can’t buy growth with ads forever. You have to earn it: tighter targeting, clearer value, and pricing that supports sustainable revenue.

This post is part of the Solopreneur Marketing Strategies USA series—practical marketing and growth moves that work when you don’t have a team, a big budget, or investors pushing you toward “growth at all costs.”

Test pricing like a bootstrapped founder: change one thing, watch one number

The simplest bootstrapped pricing test is also the most common: change the pricing page and track the impact on conversions. It’s not a perfect A/B test, but it’s often the only test you can run with low volume and limited engineering time.

Rob Walling makes a key distinction that many founders ignore:

Testing pricing for new customers is different from changing pricing for existing customers.

If you’re solo (or close to it), treat those as separate projects.

The “poor person’s split test” that actually works

If you don’t have enough traffic to run statistically clean experiments, here’s a practical approach I’ve found works well for early-stage SaaS:

1. Pick one change (raise one tier, remove a tier, change a value metric).
2. Set a fixed window (usually 2–4 weeks—long enough to smooth out weekly noise).
3. Track two numbers:
   • Trial-to-paid conversion rate (or lead-to-close if sales-led)
   • New MRR per visitor to the pricing page (a better truth metric than raw conversion)

Why “MRR per visitor”? Because conversion can go down while revenue goes up—and for bootstrapped startups, revenue pays the bills, not conversion rates.

A quick example:

• Old pricing: $29/mo, 4% pricing-page conversion
• New pricing: $49/mo, 3% conversion

Even with worse conversion, you can end up with higher revenue per visitor. That’s often the win.

Don’t “test” on existing customers until you’re confident

Raising prices on existing customers is a churn event waiting to happen if you do it casually. For bootstrappers, existing customers are your compounding asset—your closest thing to financing.

A safer sequence:

• Test new pricing on new signups first
• Validate that new pricing holds (conversion and retention indicators)
• Only then roll out increases to existing customers, ideally with:
  • clear notice (30–60 days)
  • a grandfather period or “lock in annual now” option
  • a human email from the founder for higher-value accounts

If you sell with demos, you can test pricing faster than PLG founders

Here’s the counterintuitive truth: high-touch sales can be easier for pricing discovery than low-touch self-serve.

In a sales-led motion, you can test pricing by changing what you quote—without rebuilding your billing system or debating button copy for two weeks.

A simple pricing-discovery script (that doesn’t feel awkward)

If you’re doing founder-led sales calls, try this:

• Quote a higher price than you think you “should”
• If they push back, ask:
  • “What budget did you have in mind?”
  • “What are you comparing us to?”
  • “Which outcome matters most to you this quarter?”

Then adjust intelligently. Not by collapsing instantly—but by trading, not discounting:

• “If we do annual upfront, I can do 15% off.”
• “If you don’t need feature X, we can start you on the lighter plan.”
• “If you can introduce us to your implementation owner this week, I’ll keep onboarding included.”

This keeps your positioning strong while still learning what the market will bear.

Lifetime deals: treat them like marketing spend, not real revenue

Lifetime deals are trending again in indie circles because they feel like a quick win: cash now, proof now, momentum now.

But for SaaS, the math is harsh.

A SaaS product has ongoing costs:

• hosting and infrastructure
• support and onboarding
• maintenance and security updates
• your time (the scarcest cost)

A “lifetime” customer is a customer you’ll serve for years with no recurring cash to fund the work. That’s why Rob Walling’s framing lands: it can become structurally unstable if you depend on a constant stream of new lifetime buyers.

When a lifetime deal is acceptable (rare, but real)

I’m not in the “never do it” camp. I’m in the “know why you’re doing it” camp.

A lifetime deal can make sense when:

• it’s positioned as early-access (limited quantity, limited time)
• it’s for a product with low marginal costs (e.g., low support, low infra)
• you treat it like lead generation, not ARR
• you have a plan to convert those users later (add-ons, usage-based upgrades, paid support)

A useful mental model from the episode: treat lifetime deal users as freemium users you got paid once to acquire. That’s the right level of respect for that revenue.

The hidden cost: lifetime customers can reduce acquisition later

There’s a strategic cost founders miss: when you’ve sold a chunk of your market on lifetime, you may have:

• fewer expansion opportunities
• a messier pricing story
• a harder time selling the company (buyers often see lifetime users as a liability)

If your goal is sustainable, organic growth without VC, recurring revenue is your friend. It funds content, partnerships, customer success, and steady product improvement.

“Something for everyone” gets signups. “Everything for someone” keeps them.

One line from Des Traynor (Intercom) captures a brutal truth about horizontal products:

Having something for everyone gets you acquisition. Having everything for someone gets you retention.

This is the part most solopreneurs resist—because focus feels like saying “no” to money.

But building for “everyone” is how you end up with:

• a confusing homepage
• a bloated roadmap
• customers who churn because you’re not essential

A practical ICP method for solopreneurs (no fancy tooling)

If you’re early and don’t have a data team, do this once per quarter:

1. Export your customer list (Stripe, Paddle, your CRM—anything)
2. Add three columns:
   • industry / role
   • primary use case
   • retention signal (months active, renewals, usage)
3. Sort by:
   • longest retained
   • highest price point
   • lowest support burden

Now circle the overlap. That’s your “someone.”

The goal isn’t to find a perfect persona. The goal is to find the segment that pays, stays, and refers.

The retention stack: what to build once you choose “someone”

Once you’ve chosen an ICP, retention becomes less mystical. You build the stuff they repeatedly ask for:

• integrations they already use
• workflows that match how they work
• reporting that proves your value
• onboarding that gets them to the first win faster

That’s how you reduce churn without spending on acquisition. And reducing churn is the most underrated growth channel in bootstrapping.

A quotable rule I use:

For bootstrapped SaaS, churn is a tax you can’t afford.

Pricing and positioning are marketing tactics (not finance tasks)

A lot of solopreneurs treat pricing as a finance decision: “What should I charge?”

In reality, pricing is a marketing decision:

• It signals who the product is for
• It affects which leads raise their hand
• It determines whether you can afford content, support, and product velocity

People also ask: “How often should I change my SaaS pricing?”

A clean bootstrapped answer:

• If you’re pre–product-market fit: adjust structure frequently, but keep changes small
• If you’re finding fit: test pricing every 3–6 months
• If you’re stable: revisit annually, and raise as value grows

The mistake is constant tinkering without learning. The win is a deliberate cadence.

People also ask: “Should I remove my lowest plan?”

Often, yes.

Dropping the lowest tier can:

• reduce support load from the most price-sensitive users
• improve your ability to provide good onboarding
• push your product to serve a clearer buyer

But don’t guess. Watch what happens to new MRR per visitor and activation rate.

Next steps: a bootstrapped pricing + focus sprint (7 days)

If you want a practical way to apply all of this without spinning your wheels, run a one-week sprint:

1. Day 1: Define your “someone” (ICP) using retention + revenue signals
2. Day 2: Rewrite your pricing page headline to speak to that ICP outcome
3. Day 3: Make one pricing move (raise one tier or remove one tier)
4. Days 4–7: Track pricing-page visitors, trials/leads, paid conversions, and support volume

Then decide: keep, revert, or iterate.

Bootstrapped growth is supposed to feel calm. If your business only works when you’re sprinting, pricing is probably too low or your ICP is too broad.

What’s the one decision you’ve been avoiding: raising prices, narrowing your audience, or killing the “lifetime deal” idea for good?