# Named pricing plans vs per-server pricing: about +100% revenue

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Pricing page (SaaS)
- Elements: Plans
- Date shared: 2012-08
- Test run by: [Server Density](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/server-density/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas-revenue/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/patio11-server-density-tiered-pricing/

Server Density replaced per-server pricing with a short grid of named plans starting at $99 a month, and new monthly revenue per visitor roughly doubled, from about $0.19 to $0.41. Trial sign-ups fell 25% at the same time. Server Density ran the test in VWO after taking pricing advice from Patrick McKenzie, and the results were published on the Kalzumeus blog.

## Result

**about +100% revenue**

- Monthly revenue added: $420 to $876 per roughly 2,160 visitors per arm, about +100%, or $0.19 to $0.41 per visitor. VWO showed 93% confidence, below the usual 95% bar.
- Free trial sign-ups: 150 to 113, down 25%. The drop was significant at over 99% confidence. This is a negative result on its own.
- Credit cards added: 23 to 18, a fairly similar rate, so fewer but higher-paying customers drove the revenue gain.
- Server Density reported that support requests on the new plans came mostly from paid experts at larger companies rather than hobbyists. This was an early impression, not a measured result.

## Control

The pricing page charged about $11 per server plus $2 per website, with lower per-server rates above 10 and 50 servers. Buyers had to work out their own price.

## Variant

Three to four named plans with a $99 per month minimum, split mainly by number of users and support level, plus a custom quote for over 100 servers.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- The old price grew in a straight line with server count, while the value of monitoring grows much faster for serious businesses. The plans priced closer to value.
- A $99 floor filtered out hobby users who paid little and tended to need a lot of help.
- Charging by users and support level raised the price for larger teams no matter how many servers they ran.
- One plan choice is easier to buy than a price that depends on two numbers a non-technical buyer may not know.

## Caveats

Revenue confidence was 93%, the test length was not shared, and only the first cohort's monthly revenue was measured, not long-term retention or upgrades. GBP to USD conversion distorts the exact dollar amounts.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we replace usage-based per-unit pricing with a few named plans and a higher entry price, then revenue per visitor will rise because pricing will track customer value and screen out low-value accounts.
- Primary metric: New monthly recurring revenue per visitor
- Guardrail: Trial sign-up rate
- Guardrail: Trial-to-paid conversion
- Guardrail: Early churn and downgrades
- Who should test it: B2B SaaS with complex usage-based pricing and a core customer who gets far more value than they pay for. It is riskier for products that depend on a large self-serve base of small users, or with too little traffic to read revenue per visitor.

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Credit: Server Density ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/patio11-server-density-tiered-pricing/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.