Yearly price raised 50%: minimal drop in free-to-paid
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsMojo raised the yearly price by 50% for new users in markets like the USA and Germany, and free-to-paid conversion dropped only minimally.
Mojo, a video editing app, ran these price tests, and Michal Parizek wrote them up on the RevenueCat blog. Exact figures were not shared.
- Free-to-paid conversion: only a minimal drop, per Mojo. No exact figure was shared.
- Revenue impact: not quantified, though a 50% higher price with similar conversion points to more revenue per user.
- In other markets such as Brazil, Mojo tested lower prices instead, and those did better in both the short and long run.
The change
Same paywall; only the yearly price changes, up 50% for new users in some markets.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
New users in markets such as the USA and Germany saw Mojo's existing yearly price.
Variant
The yearly price for new users in those markets was raised by 50%.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- The old yearly price was likely below what users in these markets were willing to pay.
- Mojo set test prices by hand for each market instead of relying on Apple's automatic price conversion.
- Mojo judged price tests on both 7-day new revenue and a 13-month revenue forecast, so a small conversion drop could still be a clear win.
Caveats: No exact conversion or revenue figures, sample size or duration were shared. The rise applied to some markets only; Mojo's overall ARPU growth came from many tests, not this one alone.
Who ran it
Mojo ran this test. Source: RevenueCat blog. The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
How to run this test on your app
- Hypothesis
- If we raise the yearly price for new users in a high-income market, then revenue per new user will rise because conversion will fall less than the price goes up.
- Primary metric
- New revenue per user over the conversion window (for example 7 days)
- Guardrails
- Free-to-paid conversion
- Share of yearly vs monthly plans
- Cancellation rate in the first 7 days
- Who should test it
- Apps with steady conversion that haven't revisited prices in a while, in markets with strong buying power. In price-sensitive markets, test a lower price too, as Mojo did in Brazil.
Questions
How many price points should I test at once?
Mojo usually tested one or two alternatives per market.
If signs point to being too expensive, include a lower price among them.
Can I rely on the App Store's automatic price tiers per country?
Mojo chose not to. It set each test price by hand rather than mirroring USD or EUR prices.
How often should I re-test prices?
Mojo's write-up points to re-testing at least every six months, since willingness to pay shifts over time.