Raise the price for new customers first, grandfather your existing ones generously, and give everyone a specific date well in advance. Announce it once, plainly, without apologising twice or explaining your own costs. The signal that you are ready is a low objection rate: if nearly everyone you quote says yes immediately, the price is below the value and the market has been telling you so.
How to tell you are underpriced
There is one reliable signal and it is counterintuitive: almost nobody objects.
Founders treat a high acceptance rate as proof the price is right. It is usually proof the price is invisible. When a number is well below what the outcome is worth, saying yes requires no thought, so you get no information back. A price that occasionally provokes a real conversation is a price that is doing its job.
The supporting signals, in rough order of reliability:
Customers tell you it is cheap, unprompted. This is the market handing you a note.
Your support time per customer costs more than the customer pays. At that point growth actively loses money.
The customers who complain most about price are the ones who use the product least. Price is the stated reason, fit is the real one.
You have added significant capability since you set the number and have not touched it since. Most underpricing is just drift.
Most people price too low. $9. Yup been there, done that. You can’t have a viable business unless you charge more.
via r/indiehackers
The spread you are actually choosing from
That matters for a raise because it tells you the ceiling is not where you think. If you are at $9 a month, moving to the 75th percentile is not an aggressive act, it is joining the upper half of a market full of comparable products.
The one real constraint is who you sell to. Category medians in the pricing guide range from $5.00 in Health & Fitness to $30.94 in Marketing, and that gap is about whether a business or a person is paying. You can move within your band. Moving across bands means changing customer.
The mechanics
Raise for new customers first. Change the pricing page and nothing else. You get the revenue effect and the conversion data with zero risk to anyone who already trusts you. Live with it for a month before touching existing customers at all.
Grandfather early customers, generously. The people who paid you when the product was unproven bought something riskier than the current customers are buying. A permanent legacy rate costs you little on a small base and buys you advocates.
Give a specific date, with real notice. Not "prices are changing soon" but "from 1 December, your plan moves to $X." Vagueness creates anxiety, and anxious customers cancel to regain control.
Give them a way to lock in. An option to prepay a year at the current rate turns a resentful moment into a cash injection, and the customers who take it were never going to leave.
Announce once. One clear message. Repeating it signals that you expect to be in trouble for it, and customers take their cue from you.
What to actually say
The structure that works is four sentences and no throat-clearing:
The change. "From 1 December, the Pro plan is $39 a month."
What it means for them, specifically. "Your account stays at $19 for as long as you keep it." Or, "your next invoice on 4 December will be $39." Never make them work out which case they are in.
Why, in one line, about them. What the product does now that it did not before. Not your hosting bill, not inflation, not how hard you have been working.
The door. "If that does not work for you, reply and we will sort something out." Most people will not take it. Offering it is what stops the message reading as an ultimatum.
The most common mistake is the apologetic preamble: three paragraphs about how difficult this decision was. It reads as guilt, and guilt invites negotiation. State it as a normal business fact, because it is one.
The aftermath
Expect some cancellations, and expect them to be concentrated among low-usage customers. That is the increase working: you are trading volume for revenue and support load for focus. Judge it on revenue thirty days later, not on the number of cancellation emails in the first forty-eight hours, which is when the sample is most biased toward the angry.
Watch one thing carefully. If the people leaving are your most engaged users, the problem is not the price, it is that the value was never as high as the number implies. That is a product finding, and no amount of pricing craft fixes it.
Then leave it alone. A price you revisit every quarter teaches customers to wait for the next change, and teaches you nothing, because you never see a full cohort play out at a stable number.
The clearest signal is a low objection rate. If almost everyone you quote says yes without hesitating, the price is below what the value is worth to them. Two supporting signals: customers who describe the price as cheap unprompted, and a support load that costs you more per customer than they pay you.
How much should I raise prices by?
Enough to matter, because you can only run this play occasionally without looking unstable. A move that does not change the economics is not worth the disruption it causes, and incremental single-digit increases spend the same goodwill as a meaningful one.
Should I grandfather existing customers?
Generously, especially early on. Your first customers took a risk on an unproven product and the goodwill is worth more than the incremental revenue from a small base. Raise the price for new customers first, and give existing ones either a permanent legacy rate or a long runway before the change applies.
How much notice should I give before a price increase?
Tell people well before it happens and give a specific date rather than a vague future. Surprise is what causes cancellations, not the number itself. Announce once, clearly, then let the date arrive without repeating the apology.
What do I say when I raise prices?
State the change, the date, what it means for them specifically, and what they should do if it is a problem. Do not over-explain, do not apologise twice, and do not justify it with your own costs. Customers care what they get, not what it costs you to provide.
Will raising prices cause customers to leave?
Some, and usually the ones who cost the most to support and were least engaged. The relevant question is not whether anyone leaves but whether revenue is higher afterwards, which it usually is unless the increase was very large or badly communicated.
Where these numbers come from
ARPU percentiles were computed on 22 September 2026 as monthly recurring revenue divided by active subscriptions, across the 3,696 startups in the TrustMRR corpus reporting both. Figures are self-reported by founders who chose to publish revenue publicly. We deliberately do not publish a recommended percentage increase: we hold no data on price-change outcomes, and any specific number here would be invention rather than measurement.
Cite this page
Last verified: September 22, 2026
BigIdeasDB Research. (2026). How to raise SaaS prices without losing customers. BigIdeasDB. Retrieved from https://bigideasdb.com/guides/how-to-raise-saas-prices-without-losing-customers