How do you figure out a pricing strategy for a plugin and prepare yourself for complaining users?
Yesterday, I announced that I'm getting ready to launch my MVP.
For now, it'll only be a beta version, but I'm already thinking about things like pricing, plans, and all that fun stuff.
Right now, these are the options on the table:
Freemium model (some features free, the rest behind a paywall)
Monthly plan (€7)
Annual plan (€59) with a discounted coupon
Multi-license packages
What would you criticise, change, or add to the pricing? If you know about a very good plugin I can inspire from and build my own according to it, please, drop them in the comments – I want to learn from the best.
My second question is about dealing with users who complain about pricing. From what I've seen while working with another app, people always seem to have something to say:
– "Make it free."
– "It's too expensive."
– "Do you have a discount?"
– And one thing I see a lot: people strongly prefer lifetime plans (should I consider one?)
If you have any tips on how to handle these kinds of comments from users, I'd love to mentally prepare myself in advance. :D
P.S. Here is my waitlist: https://tally.so/r/KYODRV
Replies
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@danny_christensen Sorry, I optimised it already for users who will be using the plugin. I am gonna add the description.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@danny_christensen I just need to finish it! :D
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@danny_christensen Thank you. Do you refer to why people juxtapose pricing or other products with theirs?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@pranay19 For me, the only cost is for tokens when I am trying to code. + Internet :D Otherwise, what could be my costs with such a plugin? :D
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@pranay19 To be honest, I do not have any database, first I wanted to sell only the licene codes without collecting data :D
On lifetime deals specifically: most indie devs who offer them early regret it. You attract the most price-sensitive, highest-maintenance users for a one-time payout, then watch them flood support while paying customers subsidize them indefinitely. Buffer and Basecamp both walked this back publicly. For complaints generally, the fix is a confident pricing page that leads with outcomes, not features. When someone says "too expensive," the right response is "compared to what?" not a discount. Your €59 annual is solid if you can anchor it against the cost of a distraction habit (lost productivity, screen time apps that charge more). What's the one thing your plugin does that free alternatives like iOS Screen Time genuinely cannot?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@rnagulapalle Regarding alternatives – I couldn't find any alternative to this counter of the activity, to be honest, so I can't say.
Lifetime subscription – what about limited offers? Like first 50 people at the beginning of the launch?
@busmark_w_nika
yeah i like this.. maybe grandfathered account.. that works too!!
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@rnagulapalle that is a new term (concept) for me :D short intro helps. But okay, what should be a pricing for lifetime? :D
The freemium structure you have is sound. One thing worth being deliberate about before launch: define exactly what the free tier can and cannot do, and make sure that line is visible on the pricing page before anyone signs up. Most pricing complaints come from people who felt surprised, not people who genuinely think the price is wrong. If they know what they're getting into, the "make it free" comments drop significantly.
On lifetime deals: the comments here are right to be cautious, but the real risk isn't the price, it's the customer type. Lifetime buyers optimise for not paying, which means they'll push hardest for features that reduce their need to upgrade. Cap it hard if you do it at all (first 30-50 seats max) and price it at 4-5x annual, not 2x.
On handling the complaints that will still come through: write your four canned responses now, before launch. "Make it free," "too expensive," "do you have a discount," and "why no lifetime." Personalise one line when you send them. You'll thank yourself around week three when you're getting five of these a day and your energy needs to go toward building, not rewording the same reply.
Your €7 monthly is fine. Hold it.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@satchmo_saunders isn't it too much for a lifetime to make it like "pay 200 euros"? :D
@busmark_w_nika Ha, not necessarily! It depends what your annual is. If annual is €59, then €200 lifetime is only about 3.4 years of payments..
Anyone who plans to use it long term does the math instantly and takes it. You want lifetime buyers to feel like they won, but not so much that you regret it in year two. €200 at €59 annual is probably too low. €149-199 at €7 monthly (€84/year) makes more sense, puts breakeven at under 2 years, and still feels like a deal to them.
The cap matters more than the price though. 30 seats and it's gone is a stronger signal than any number you pick.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@satchmo_saunders I dunno, because our app is yearly 30 euros and lifetime around 60 :D and it can do more than my tool atm :D
@busmark_w_nika Ha fair point, but that app has an existing user base and a known support pattern. At MVP stage you don't know yet how much each user will cost you in time and infrastructure. The 2x ratio makes more sense once you've got 6-12 months of data on what a typical user actually demands. Early adopters on lifetime deals tend to be your most demanding users precisely because they feel ownership. I'd give yourself more buffer at the start, and you can always run a flash sale later to move seats at a lower price if you want to.
The trap is trying to price so nobody complains. You can't, and chasing it just makes your pricing mushy.
A few things that have held up for me:
The "make it free" crowd is usually not your buyer. People who would never pay still complain the loudest, so give them a free tier that does one thing well and stop treating the rest of their feedback as signal. The folks who actually get value will pay €7 without blinking.
Skip the lifetime deal. Everyone here is right about support cost, but the real problem is who it attracts. Lifetime buyers tend to be the most demanding and were rarely going to be long-term revenue anyway. You swap a small bump now for years of maintenance owed to people who paid once.
On "too expensive," that almost always means the value isn't obvious yet, not that the number is wrong. I'd test €11/mo before I'd ever test €5. Anchoring low is really hard to climb back from.
And write your canned responses before launch, like Satchmo said. When someone asks for a discount, having a calm answer ready stops you negotiating against yourself at 11pm.
I work on a creator platform called DukieX and we went through exactly this with our own tiers and fees. What actually helped was deciding out loud who we were not for, and being fine with those people walking. Pricing got a lot easier after that.
Good luck with the launch.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@adrian_witaszak Thank you so much for your honest opinion, Adrian. I have a question – should I price it first 11 € rather than 7?
@busmark_w_nika Short answer: yes, start at €11, not €7. It's far easier to discount down than to raise later. Launch at €7 and bump to €11 in six months, early users feel robbed. Launch at €11 and offer €7 as a launch deal, the same people feel rewarded. Same two numbers, opposite reaction.
€11 also gives you room to run promos without wrecking your anchor. "First 50 at €7" then reads as generous instead of as your real price.
One honest caveat: this only works if the value lands fast. If someone installs it and immediately sees what it does, €11 is a non-issue. If it takes them a while to get it, no price feels comfortable, and that's a messaging problem, not a pricing one. So I'd put €11 on the page and pour the energy into making the first 30 seconds obvious.
And don't read "nobody complains at €7" as a win. Cheap gets bought by people who churn. A few grumbles at €11 from people who then stay is the healthier signal.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@adrian_witaszak In that case, should I ask 77 or 99 for yearly? Because I want to make yearly more beneficial like "save XY% by purchasing yearly instead of monthly."
@busmark_w_nika €99, not €77. At €11/mo that's €132 a year, so €99 is "save 25%," basically 3 months free. A real nudge without teaching people the monthly price is a sucker's deal.
€77 is about 42% off. That's so steep the annual quietly becomes your real price and monthly looks like a penalty, and you leave money on the table from people who'd happily have paid more.
The job of the annual discount isn't to be the lowest possible number. It's to pull cash forward and lock in the people who'll stick. Two to three months free does that. Five months free just trains everyone to wait for the annual.
So: €11/mo, €99/yr, headline it "Save 25%." Clean, and you can still run a launch promo under it without wrecking the anchor.
Receiptor AI
not a plugin expert so I'll skip that part, but on pricing criticism: most of it isn't about price.
My expereince is that it's usually a window into something else: time to value, friction before the product clicked, the user never got to the moment where it felt worth it.
What helped us at @Receiptor AI was tying the conversation to felt value. For us, the receipt volume flowing through the product proved to be a strong proxy for time saved (the felt value). But the best insight we got about "felt value" (so pricing) came from deep conversations with users.
So don't ignore pricing criticism, but investigate it. The ones worth ignoring are the ones with no substance, where someone just wants it free and hasn't really engaged with the product.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@luigi_receiptorai I think it makes sense to observe cricitism when more people are complaining, but when only minority, it feels like people want things for free.
ZeroHuman.
Great question, Nika!
I think pricing mostly comes down to two things: what kind of users do you want, and how much communication and support do you want to handle?
If your main goal with the beta is feedback, I’d probably make it free at first. You’ll get more users, more edge cases, and more opinions about what should be improved.
If you want to generate some revenue without dealing with subscriptions, I’d test a limited founders lifetime deal. You’ll probably make fewer sales (but more cash), but each sale will be bigger, and those customers will usually have clearer intent than random free users. I just wouldn’t offer it forever... limit it to the first 100–200 customers or to the launch period.
Two relevant free chrome extension examples are Unhook, which removes Youtube recommendations and Shorts, and Ashdeck, a free and open-source website blocker and focus dashboard.
For lifetime pricing, you can look at Cold Turkey Blocker Pro, which uses a “pay once, own forever” model, and Freedom Forever, which provides lifetime access through a single payment. both are in the distraction-blocking and screen-time space and work with browser blocking.
Regarding complaints... I wouldn’t try to make everyone happy. Some people will say €7 is expensive, while others will happily pay €100+ for lifetime access. The important signal is whether your actual target users are willing to pay, not whether nobody complains.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@byalexai Thank you, Alex. Sometimes I cannot get how much information you store in your memory! :D All of these are tremendously valuable. I cannot wait to research them and apply something to myself :)
This is so timely I'm going through the exact same pricing decisions with Ritually right now!
A few thoughts from what I've learned: On freemium it works best when the free tier
genuinely solves the problem but leaves users wanting more. If free is too good, nobody upgrades.
If it's too limited, nobody stays. On the lifetime plan question I'd say yes, but only as a launch special. It creates urgency,
rewards early adopters, and gives you upfront cash to fund development. Just cap it at a limited number of seats.
On handling pricing complaints I love this framing: "We're not expensive for the right customer." Not everyone is your customer, and that's okay. The people who complain about price are rarely the ones who would have paid anyway.
Your €7/month feels right for the value.
Hold the line on it. Rooting for your launch Nika! 🌱
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@innocent_fonkoa Thank you so much and for your quotes and insights too. They inspire me more than anything.
the ladder is good. three sharpening tactics on price:
1. monthly at €7 is too cheap. people who pay €7 will also pay €11. you need that delta to fund the support load for complaining users. drop only if you have data showing €7 converts 3x better. (rarely does.)
2. annual at €59 with a coupon cheapens the offer. instead: full €99 no coupon, but make "priority support reply within 4 hours" a clearly named annual-only benefit. anchored on time-value, not discount.
3. multi-license: do not ship at MVP. doubles support surface for 5 percent of revenue. defer to month 3-4 when one team begs for it.
on lifetime plans: avoid. you will hate yourself in year 3 when the customer who paid €99 once is still demanding feature work and zero percent of your MRR is going toward serving them. one exception: a strictly capped "first 50 founding members" early-bird tier at 4x annual, with the explicit note that support is best-effort.
on complaining users: write the canned responses to your 4 most likely complaints BEFORE launch. when complaint hits, paste with one personalization. saves your morning AND your nervous system.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@thenameisarian The piece of advice you addressed is pretty solid, thank you very much.
What do you mean by a strictly capped "first 50 founding members" early-bird tier at 4x annual?