How do you price for early users when there's no real price history yet?

I've been working through pricing for my service, Retic, a goal and habit tracker I'm about to launch, and ran into a framing problem I didn't expect.

The obvious move is the classic $9 → $5 "early bird" discount. Except there's no real $9 to strike through. The product has never charged anyone anything, so a crossed-out price would just be a number I invented to make $5 look like a deal.

I went with a different promise instead: the price you sign up at now is $5/month, and it stays $5/month for you even after I raise prices for new users later. No fake anchor, just a real lock-in. If pricing ever moves, it moves for people who join after, not for you.

Curious how other pre-launch founders have handled this. Did you invent a "before" price anyway, or find another way to make an early-access deal feel real without inventing history that doesn't exist?