Ask HN: Annual or Monthly billing, which is better?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14244697

by clientelle • 9 years ago

16 12 9 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Anyone tested the two models? Which one has worked well for your project?

hekker• 9 years ago

Not tested them both: I work with annual billing for my SaaS. The pricing page shows monthly prices, which works well for me. Customers buy a contract for a year which they can cancel at any moment. Obviously the remaining months within that contract year will not be refunded. Note that the SaaS is only 300 euros a year so your mileage may vary. (B2B market)

yulaow• 9 years ago

monthly billing + annual fairly discounted billing without refund in case of cancellation.

carlmungz2• 9 years ago

Annual billing works for my model because my users will not be making enough frequent purchases to justify a monthly fee (which is what I initially started with). I provide actionable information which they can use once, twice or more times a year.

clientelle• 9 years ago

Love to see how you present the pricing, have a link?

carlmungz2• 9 years ago

https://citybreakflights.com

shoo• 9 years ago

There's quite a bit of relevant stuff in this talk by Jason Cohen -- 'Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business': https://vimeo.com/74338272

saluki• 9 years ago

We offer both, about 20% subscribe to annual plan.

It's pretty common for SaaS to offer a monthly plan and an annual plan for each tier that is 10 x Monthly cost so users get 2 months free paying annually.

kidlogic• 9 years ago

annual billing, period. being able to access a year's worth of capital upfront will always be better (from the providers point-of-view)

skdotdan• 9 years ago

Could you expand on that?

dyeje• 9 years ago

It's better to have money now rather than later.

jasonkester• 9 years ago

Not always. Personally, I find annual billing a bit annoying to deal with because it introduces spikiness into our monthly revenue numbers. Whereas before I could tell you roughly what we'd bring in each month (by looking at the previous month and adding a bit), now it can vary by a few thousand dollars depending on where our Annual subscribers land in the year.

In the long term, it's probably better for the business, since it bumps Lifetime Value up a bit for those customers. But I'd actually prefer it if nobody took advantage of it, so that I could have a nice smooth revenue chart to look at.

paulmatthijs• 9 years ago

Annual, although I'd like to see some real life high volume SaaS numbers on churn comparing the two.

We do non-recurring monthly and recurring annual as a in-between solution.

Ask HN: Annual or Monthly billing, which is better?

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