suede-pricing v2.1.0A

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---
name: suede-pricing
description: "Suede-owned pricing and packaging discipline. Use when deciding what to charge, structuring tiers, choosing a value metric, comparing free trials with freemium, researching willingness to pay, planning a price increase, or tearing down a pricing page for clarity and AI-readability. NOT FOR: in-product upgrade screens (use suede-paywalls), offer bonuses and guarantees (use suede-offers), or executing billing changes."
metadata:
  version: 2.1.0
---

# Suede Pricing & Packaging

Suede Pricing turns verified product economics, buyer evidence, and commercial
constraints into testable prices, value metrics, tiers, and migration plans.
It produces a decision brief and measurement plan while keeping billing changes
behind explicit approval.

## Before Starting

**Check for product marketing context first:**
If `.agents/product-marketing.md` exists (or `.claude/product-marketing.md`, or the legacy `product-marketing-context.md` filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Gather this context (ask if not provided):

### 1. Business Context
- What type of product? (SaaS, marketplace, e-commerce, service)
- What's your current pricing (if any)?
- What's your target market? (SMB, mid-market, enterprise)
- What's your go-to-market motion? (self-serve, sales-led, hybrid)

### 2. Value & Competition
- What's the primary value you deliver?
- What alternatives do customers consider?
- How do competitors price?

### 3. Current Performance
- What's your current conversion rate?
- What's your ARPU and churn rate?
- Any feedback on pricing from customers/prospects?

### 4. Goals
- Optimizing for growth, revenue, or profitability?
- Moving upmarket or expanding downmarket?

---

## Pricing Fundamentals

Three axes, decided in this order: **packaging** (what's included per tier),
**pricing metric** (what you charge for), **price point** (how much).

Price sits between the next best alternative (the floor) and the customer's
perceived value (the ceiling). Cost to serve is a baseline, never the basis.

---

## Value Metrics

### What is a Value Metric?

The value metric is what you charge for—it should scale with the value customers receive.

**Good value metrics:**
- Align price with value delivered
- Are easy to understand
- Scale as customer grows
- Are hard to game

### Common Value Metrics

| Metric | Best For | Example |
|--------|----------|---------|
| Per user/seat | Collaboration tools | Slack, Notion |
| Per usage | Variable consumption | AWS, Twilio |
| Per feature | Modular products | HubSpot add-ons |
| Per contact/record | CRM, email tools | Mailchimp |
| Per transaction | Payments, marketplaces | Stripe |
| Flat fee | Simple products | Basecamp |

### Choosing Your Value Metric

Ask: "As a customer uses more of [metric], do they get more value?"
- If yes → good value metric
- If no → price doesn't align with value

### Defaults to Beat

These are the answers a model reaches for unprompted. Each is allowed, but only
once you state why it beats the alternative for this product — never by default:
**$9/$29/$99** (or any flat 3x ladder); **Starter/Pro/Enterprise** names that
carry no product meaning; **exactly three tiers** when the buyer set is two or
four; **20% off annual** as the reflex discount; **"Contact us"** on the top
tier, which hides price from buyers and from the agents that now shortlist tools
(see Pricing Page Teardown); **per-seat** when usage, records, or transactions
track value better.

---

## Tier Structure Overview

### Good-Better-Best Framework

**Good tier (Entry):** Core features, limited usage, low price
**Better tier (Recommended):** Full features, reasonable limits, anchor price
**Best tier (Premium):** Everything, advanced features, 2-3x Better price

### Tier Differentiation

- **Feature gating** — Basic vs. advanced features
- **Usage limits** — Same features, different limits
- **Support level** — Email → Priority → Dedicated
- **Access** — API, SSO, custom branding

**For detailed tier structures and persona-based packaging**: See [references/tier-structure.md](references/tier-structure.md)

---

## Pricing Research

### Van Westendorp Method

Four questions that identify acceptable price range:
1. Too expensive (wouldn't consider)
2. Too cheap (question quality)
3. Expensive but might consider
4. A bargain

Analyze intersections to find optimal pricing zone.

### MaxDiff Analysis

Identifies which features customers value most:
- Show sets of features
- Ask: Most important? Least important?
- Results inform tier packaging

**For detailed research methods**: See [references/research-methods.md](references/research-methods.md)

---

## When to Raise Prices

### Signs It's Time

**Market signals:**
- Competitors have raised prices
- Prospects don't flinch at price
- "It's so cheap!" feedback

**Business signals:**
- Very high conversion rates (>40%)
- Very low churn (<3% monthly)
- Strong unit economics

**Product signals:**
- Significant value added since last pricing
- Product more mature/stable

### Price Increase Strategies

1. **Grandfather existing** — New price for new customers only
2. **Delayed increase** — Announce 3-6 months out
3. **Tied to value** — Raise price but add features
4. **Plan restructure** — Change plans entirely

---

## Pricing Page Best Practices

### Above the Fold
- Clear tier comparison table
- Recommended tier highlighted
- Monthly/annual toggle
- Primary CTA for each tier

### Common Elements
- FAQ section
- Annual discount callout (17-20%)
- Money-back guarantee

### Pricing Psychology
- **Anchoring:** Show higher-priced option first
- **Decoy effect:** Middle tier should be best value
- **Charm pricing:** $49 vs. $50 (for value-focused)
- **Round pricing:** $50 vs. $49 (for premium)

---

## Pricing Page Teardown

When someone wants to audit an existing pricing *page* for **clarity, transparency, and AI-readability** (not the pricing strategy itself, and not conversion-rate optimization — that's `suede-site-alchemy`), run a **teardown** that scores it across two axes and returns prioritized fixes:

- **Human buyer experience** — value-prop clarity, plan differentiation, cognitive load, trust signals, pricing psychology, and price transparency.
- **AI-agent readiness** — whether the LLMs and agents that increasingly shortlist and compare tools can actually read and quote your pricing: machine-readable prices (not locked in an image or behind "Contact us"), extractable FAQ/objection coverage, per-tier depth stated in text, and structured data. Buyers now ask ChatGPT/Perplexity/Claude "what's the best X and what does it cost?" *before* visiting — a pricing page an agent can't parse loses deals you never see.

**Fast check — the "paste test":** give the pricing URL to a browsing-capable AI (Perplexity, ChatGPT with search, Claude with web) — or paste the rendered page text — and ask "what are the plans and prices?" A clean miss means agents fetching your page will struggle too (a heuristic, not proof every agent fails).

The AI-readiness fixes are usually high-impact, low-effort (put prices in text, add `Offer` schema). Hand implementation to **suede-seo-audit** (Product/Offer JSON-LD and supported-schema checks) and **suede-ai-seo** (extractability, AI-bot access, `llms.txt`).

**For the full 10-dimension rubric, scoring, and report template:** See [references/pricing-page-teardown.md](references/pricing-page-teardown.md). *(AI-agent-readiness lens adapted from Kyle Poyar / Growth Unhinged.)*

---

## Output: Pricing Decision Brief

Every pricing or packaging engagement that is not a teardown returns this exact
structure. Use these headings verbatim; leave a heading in with "not decided —
[what's missing]" rather than dropping it.

```markdown
# Pricing Decision Brief — [product]

## Value metric
[What you charge for, and the one sentence proving usage of it tracks value.]

## Tier map
| Tier | Who it's for | Included | Limits | Price |
|------|--------------|----------|--------|-------|

## Price points + rationale
[Each number, and what it is anchored to: alternative, perceived value, or research.]

## Assumptions
[Every number taken on faith, flagged as assumption not measurement.]

## Validation plan
[What test or research confirms each assumption, and the metric that reads out.]

## Migration + grandfathering
[Existing customers: who moves, when, on what notice, and who is held.]

## What I did NOT decide
[Anything left to the user: committed price, published copy, billing changes.]
```

---

## Boundaries

- Do not create or change billing products, prices, subscriptions, or customer
  migrations without verified live state, a maximum-cost check, and explicit
  approval.
- Do not present willingness-to-pay, conversion, churn, or revenue impact as
  measured unless current research or product data supports it.
- Do not publish pricing copy, choose grandfathering policy, or commit the
  business to a price; return a recommendation, assumptions, and validation
  plan for the user to decide.

## Routing

- Use `suede-paywalls` for in-product upgrade and paywall experiences.
- Use `suede-offers` for bonuses, guarantees, and offer framing.
- Use `suede-ab-testing` to validate pricing-page or packaging hypotheses.
- Use `suede-revops` for approved deal-desk and pipeline implementation.