Pricing
Why $20 is nothing to one customer and too much to another
The same price reads three different ways depending on who's looking. Pricing for one imagined buyer leaves money on the table with the others. Segment the willingness to pay.
Put a $20/month price in front of three people and you get three reactions. To one, $20 is a rounding error — they'd pay far more. To another, $20 is fine but only short-term, as-needed. To a third, mid-expense-cut, $20 is a line item to kill. Same price, three different truths.
Pricing for a single imagined buyer serves none of them well. The fix is to make the spread explicit.
| Segment | Sees $20 as | What serves them |
|---|---|---|
| High willingness | Nothing — would pay more | A premium tier that captures it |
| Short-term / as-needed | Fine, but not forever | Monthly, easy pause/cancel, or usage pricing |
| Cutting expenses | A line item to cut | A free or low entry tier that retains them |
Willingness to pay is a range, not a number
There's no single “right price” because there's no single customer. Willingness to pay is a distribution, and good pricing captures more of it — a premium tier for the top, a fair core for the middle, a free or cheap rung for the bottom you'd otherwise lose entirely. That's what tiers are FOR.
A flat single price implicitly bets everyone values the product the same. They don't.
Mapping your segments
Cadenly's Pricing Strategy workflow makes the spread explicit — it derives your segments and their willingness-to-pay bands (pulling from your customer feedback if you have it), so your tiers are designed to serve the range instead of guessing at one buyer.
- The same price reads differently to different buyers.
- Willingness to pay is a distribution, not a single number.
- Tiers exist to capture more of that range — top, middle, and bottom.
Price for the spread, not one buyer
Cadenly maps your willingness-to-pay segments so your tiers serve the whole range.
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