GetSettledUp Pricing Discussion

In my previous two blog posts I went over my thinking of charging for beta access and then subsequently the results of that experiment. Today, I want to go over my monetization strategy now that I am close to launching, what I guess we can call, V1!

SaaS Approach

To start, GetSettledUp will be a SaaS product, meaning it will be subscription based. I knew going into the project that was the approach I was going to take and made sure to build in support for the flexibility I was thinking we may need. GetSettledUp is built on Laravel, with cherry-picked ideas from Laravel Spark so we leverage Laravel Cashier for their Stripe Integration.

Off topic, but I have a Laravel Spark license and had originally planned to use it as the foundation for GetSettledUp due to the Team approach. Ultimately, the lack of flexibility and time required to customize it lead to me scrapping that approach but cherry-picking some of the traits that come standard with Laravel Spark.

I can make a follow up blog post on my Laravel Spark thoughts, and using Laravel Cashier/Stripe if people are interested. For now, enough preamble, let's talk money.

Subscription

So my original thinking was to offer the following options:

  • Free Plan: 50 Transactions, 3 Settlements, and 2 Team Members
  • Couples Plan: Unlimited Transactions & Settlements, and 2 Team Members @ $4.99/mo
  • Roommate Plan: Unlimited Transactions & Settlements, and 4 Team Members @ $6.99/mo
  • Family Plan: Unlimited Transactions & Settlements, and 6 Team Members @ $11.99/mo The plans all included all other features of GetSettledUp.

I still don't mind this approach, and may come back to it in the future. However, after chatting through my goal for GetSettledUp with Ryan from Amezmo on Twitter (thanks for your feedback!), I realized the above plans don't fit with my vision. So let's chat about my vision.

Vision

In short, my vision for GetSettledUp is a more premium bill splitting service. One that values privacy, and security over just volume of users. The reason I started GetSettledUp was because I didn't want to give a bill splitting service complete access to my bank accounts (seriously, what world do we live in). On top of that many of the bill splitting services off an almost completely free experience with no need to sign up for a premium account. Now I am not going to accuse anyone, but as the saying goes if you aren't paying for the product that is because you are the product. I don't want that with GetSettledUp. Your data is yours, not ours, and we will monetize via subscriptions not selling data, ads, or personal information.

Going back to the plans

So with all that said, here is the new pricing model I am thinking GetSettledUp will be launching with. With everything, pricing is always subject to change, but when it does I will do another blog explaining why!

New plans:

  • Couples Plan: Unlimited Transactions & Settlements, and 2 Team Members @ $3.99/mo
  • Roommate Plan: Unlimited Transactions & Settlements, and 4 Team Members @ $6.99/mo That's it. No free plan, and no family plan. All plans will come with a 60-day free trial (which we will discuss below), and there will be an option to buy additional teammates for $1.99/mo.

What do you think of these prices? Let me know on Twitter as I would love to hear your feedback!

Free Trial

So as mentioned above, both GetSettledUp plans will come with a 60-day free trial. This was originally only going to be 30 days, but I think with transactions that require splitting you will only see the true value of GetSettledUp after you have done it for a month, and with 30-days you may not have that opportunity.

Closing thoughts

I hope you find this interesting! I am enjoying writing down my thoughts and thinking process behind decisions and hope to continue to do so for not only GetSettledUp but all future projects. If you want to keep up to date or reach out to me to chat the best place to connect with me is on Twitter.