Pricier plan listed first on the paywall: both plans sold more
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsMicrosoft 365 moved its more expensive plan to the top of its app paywall as the default, and both plans sold more, the cheaper personal plan most of all.
Ramit Arora of the Microsoft 365 team shared it in a Sub Club podcast write-up on the RevenueCat blog. No numbers were given.
- Subscriptions sold: both plans sold more after the reorder. No figures were shared.
- Personal plan: it sold a lot more, by Ramit Arora's account, even though it moved down the list.
- Revenue per user, sample size and test length were not shared.
The change
Plan order swapped: the more expensive plan moves to the top as the default
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The paywall listed the personal plan first.
Variant
The more expensive plan was listed first and set as the default, with the personal plan below it.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Seeing the pricier plan first set a high anchor, so the personal plan felt like a good deal.
- Some users likely took the premium plan simply because it was the default they saw first.
- Ramit Arora's reading: people who balked at the expensive default felt more sure about buying the cheaper one.
Caveats: No numbers, sample size or duration were shared; the result comes from an interview recap on the RevenueCat blog.
Who ran it
Microsoft 365 ran this test. Source: RevenueCat blog (Sub Club podcast write-up). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
How to run this test on your app
- Hypothesis
- If we list our most expensive plan first and make it the default, then total plan purchases will rise because the cheaper plan looks like better value next to it.
- Primary metric
- Paywall conversion rate (purchases per paywall view)
- Guardrails
- Proceeds per user
- Plan mix
- Refund rate
- Who should test it
- Apps with two or more tiers, such as personal and family or standard and premium. It fits less well when one plan is far cheaper than any other, since the gap may just put people off.
Questions
Won't putting the expensive plan first scare people off?
Microsoft 365 saw the opposite: both plans sold more.
The pricier plan acted as an anchor that made the cheaper one look like a deal.
Should the expensive plan also be preselected?
In this test it was listed first as the default.
Track plan mix and refunds to make sure people aren't buying the bigger plan by accident.
How do we know if it worked for us?
Compare purchases per paywall view and proceeds per user between the two orders.
A shift in plan mix alone isn't enough.