Ever sat in a roadmap discussion where everyone is obsessed with the next big feature, but nobody wants to talk about the pricing? I have.
In one of my assignments, I spent months polishing a new feature I was sure customers would love. It launched to polite applause. But guess what got us a spike in sign-ups a few weeks later? A tweak to our pricing model.
Lesson learnt: Sometimes the most impactful "feature" isn’t found in your codebase - it’s sitting on your pricing page.
Let’s face it: pricing has a PR problem in the product world. We treat it like a management or a late-stage business decision. In fact, when do product managers get excited about discussing price points or packaging? Rarely. Yet it's core to the customer experience. It shapes their perception of value before they even use your product.
Think about it: We pay detailed attention to pixel-perfect UI designs, but do we give the same love to how we price and package our product? What if we approached pricing with the same curiosity as we do to other features? We might discover that moving the pricing needle can drive revenue as much as a big new feature release. After all, what’s good about a feature that customers can’t afford (or don’t understand the value of)? So my question is, why not make pricing itself a feature?
Consider Spotify. Its discovery algorithms and playlists are great features, but one of its best innovations was in pricing. Back when piracy was rampant and paying for music felt archaic, Spotify flipped the script with a freemium model: Free music for everyone, with ads, and a premium option at just $9.99 a month for the ad-free experience.
That $9.99 price point wasn’t an accident, it was a masterstroke. Psychologically, it feels a lot cheaper because it’s under $10 even though the difference between $9.99 and $10 is tiny in reality.. (Turns out, our brains love seeing a 9 at the start of a price more than a 10.) More importantly, Spotify’s free tier wasn’t a trial that vanished in 14 days; it was free forever, with decent functionality. This wasn’t just a pricing decision, it was a product decision. By letting people enjoy music for free indefinitely, Spotify gained hundreds of millions of users who eventually thought, “You know, ad-free music for the price of two lattes - why not?”
In hindsight, Spotify’s growth wasn’t fueled by just superior features alone. Its savvy pricing strategy became its most powerful feature. Would Spotify have dominated if it had launched straight as a $10/month service with no free option? Probably not. Pricing was the melody that made the product sing.
As product professionals we obsess over removing friction from the user experience. Here’s the irony: pricing and payment are huge friction point in any customer journey, yet we often treat it as afterthought.
Ever abandoned an online subscription because the pricing was confusing or the fees felt sneaky? That’s a product problem and not just a pricing issue.
What if we treated pricing pages and plans like core parts of our product UX?
This would mean designing transparent and delightful pricing, and yes, delightful pricing does exist. It could be a pay-as-you-go plan that feels fair, a nicely timed discount that feels like a reward, or a tier that perfectly matches a customer’s needs.
A savvy pricing strategy also respects human psychology. For instance, the “Left-digit effect” (that magic of $9.99 vs $10) is essentially UX for the brain. Good pricing finds that sweet spot where the user says “This is a great deal,” and the business still succeeds. It also means, product managers should experiment with pricing tiers just like they A/B test features.
A few ideas from the field:
Building great products isn’t just about what features you offer, but also how you offer them. Price is a huge part of that “how.” As product managers, we spend our days dreaming up features that delight users. Maybe it’s time we put the same creativity into how we price those features. In my journey, the moments where pricing took center stage have often delivered the biggest “a-ha!” moments. Bot for the business and the customers.
So next time you’re prioritizing, ask yourself; What if pricing was your product’s next killer feature? You might be surprised at the answers. After all, a brilliant product with thoughtful pricing is a bit like a concert; the audience doesn’t just hear the music, they feel the value.
Embrace pricing not just as a number on a slide, but as an integral part of your product’s story. Who knows, your best feature might just be a well-placed dollar sign.
