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Designing and Optimizing your SaaS Pricing Page (with examples and checklist).

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Conversion Optimization

Designing and Optimizing your SaaS Pricing Page (with examples and checklist).

Summary

A well-designed SaaS pricing page can make or break conversions, and this guide lays out the key elements to get it right. From strategically planning your tiers and using psychological triggers like loss aversion, to optimizing copy and CTAs, every detail should guide users toward the right plan with confidence. Real-world examples like Slack and Smartlead show how transparency and persuasive design work in practice. The article also includes a 10-step checklist covering everything from simplicity and localization to pop-up explanations and testing—all designed to enhance clarity, trust, and engagement.

Introduction


Today we turn to our SaaS audience as we discuss how to ensure that your Pricing Page is clear, makes sense, is optimized from a CRO lens and is designed in the best way to get customers to choose the correct plan. Let’s dive in!


Plan your Packages Smartly


Don’t just thumb-suck your pricing and tiers out of nothing. Think carefully and strategically of the broader strategy before going into the details when doing this:

Do you need 5 different plans or is 2 enough?

Does the amount of additional value in higher plans justify the price you’re asking people to pay for?

If you have a free plan, have you thought about how this ties into your Product-Led Growth/self-serve model? Have you mapped out the user journey for each respective plan or do users go through the exact same onboarding?

Have you clearly identified which features will be available in which plan based on research-backed data?

This (and much more) needs to be thought out and tested continuously to see what fits best based on your business model.



The simpler the better.



Slack opts for a 4-tiered pricing package with complete transparency. They exercise 2 tactics here very well:
→ If you hover over each feature, it tells you exactly what it does. There is no vagueness here and you know exactly what you get.


Don’t leave room for customers to question the value of what they’re getting.

→ They also make use of something called ‘Loss Aversion’ - where people are affected more by losing something than by gaining something.


They show the ‘full list’ of features in every plan, but blur out the ones that you lose out on as you gradually go through the plans. Seeing those features and then having them taken away can be a powerful motivator to choose a higher plan if relevant.


Smart copy and CTAs




Smartlead
gets clever with their copy and get in your head a little bit. How?

  • Monthly plan vs Get 17% Off Yearly: Immediately, your brain does not register ‘expensive annual plan with huge commitment’, but rather ‘17% cheaper than a safe monthly plan.’ Enough of an incentive?

  • Basic Plan vs Popular Plan vs Pro Plan: You see ‘Popular Plan’ and think it makes sense (it’s in the middle - high enough not to be a joke but still within your price range), but then, you look to the right and see that ‘78% prefer the Pro Plan.’ Strange - well then the Pro must be better if so many people prefer it even over the ‘Popular Plan.’ And it’s not even that much more pricey.

  • Clear CTAs emphasizing the Free Trial with no strings attached. You know exactly what you’re getting if you click that button.


10-Step Pricing Page Checklist

  1. Keep it simple

  2. Correct number of tiers

  3. Highlight/help customers choose the correct plan

  4. Make comparison easy

  5. Testimonials/Trust Points

  6. Allow for custom currency choice

  7. Be strategic with your CTA copy

  8. Make it clear what happens next

  9. Eliminate any vagueness with pop-up descriptions/FAQs

  10. Test


Currency converters

You might not think this makes such a difference, but localisation plays a large role in the psychology of new customers. Of course, this depends on the regions you are targeting, but for global companies, this can be very effective.



Mailchimp does a great example of this with a dropdown to switch to different currencies. If I now come and see the option to view my own currency, immediately I feel like I am being spoken to personally and can relate to the pricing without worrying if I’m getting ripped off or not.



Conclusion


There is so much to be said on this topic and it can be explored from so many angles. I focused only on the actual pricing table itself, but there is also much to be said about what goes around it and below it (customer testimonials, a detailed feature comparison table for your more technical customers etc.)

The options for strategy and creativity are endless and you simply need to find what works best for you - not your competitor.

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