Pricing tests that moved users to annual plans: +207% LTV
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsA series of pricing tests that shifted subscribers from monthly toward annual plans raised LTV by 207% for dub, a retail investing app. dub ran the tests, and the outcome was published as a RevenueCat customer story.
- LTV rose 207% after the shift toward annual plans.
- This is the outcome of several pricing tests together, not one A/B test.
- dub also ran win-back offers in the same period, including a discounted annual switch for monthly users trying to cancel, which may have added to the LTV gain.
Control
dub's pricing left it with a mix of monthly and annual subscribers.
Variant
dub tested several pricing tiers, subscription models and paywall designs, and moved toward annual plans. The individual variants were not described.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Annual plans collect a year of revenue up front and remove eleven monthly chances to cancel.
- An investing app pays off over time, so a yearly commitment fits how users get value.
- Because several changes shipped, we cannot say which one drove the lift.
Caveats: Bundled: the 207% comes from a series of pricing and paywall tests whose variants were not described. It was published by RevenueCat, which sells the experiments tool used, and sample size and duration were not shared.
Who ran it
dub ran this test. Source: RevenueCat customer story. The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
How to run this test on your app
- Hypothesis
- If we make the annual plan the main offer on the paywall, then LTV will rise because more users pay for a year up front and fewer churn monthly.
- Primary metric
- LTV per paying user
- Guardrails
- Paywall conversion
- Refund rate on annual plans
- Renewal rate at year one
- Who should test it
- Apps whose value builds over months, such as finance, health or learning apps. Apps with short, one-off use may lose too many buyers when monthly is pushed down.
Questions
How do I push users toward annual without losing conversions?
Common options are a default-selected annual plan, a per-month price for the annual plan, or an annual offer at cancellation. dub used a discounted annual switch at cancellation as one tactic.
Can I credit the 207% to a single paywall change?
No. It came from several pricing tests and ran alongside win-back campaigns, so treat it as the result of a strategy, not one change.