Over the last year, more than 50 SaaS founders, operators, and pricing experts have joined Monetizing SaaS to share lessons on building and pricing software. Recently, we added a new format to the podcast: pricing and billing teardowns of popular dev tools. Our first episode was focused on Mintlify, and one of the things we immediately noticed is that they're actively iterating on their pricing page to drive conversion and expansion. A week before we recorded the episode, their pricing page included two add-ons baked into their plans. A week later, the pricing page was emphasizing seat-based expansion, complete with a new dropdown for editors. This shift highlights at least a couple of things: 🔹 They’re actively testing how changes to packaging structure influence customer decisions. 🔹 They're demonstrating a focus on optimizing for user adoption and expansion. The Lesson: A pricing page shouldn't be static. Instead, it should be viewed as a playground for iteration, experimentation, fine-tuning how you communicate your value, and optimizing customer conversion.
Schematic
Software Development
End to end pricing & packaging for B2B, from feature delivery through customer experience
About us
Schematic allows businesses to outsource pricing and packaging with a few lines of code, enabling them to quickly launch new packaging models, take the burden off of engineering, and flexibly adjust their pricing and packaging to individual customer preferences. With Schematic, teams can ship faster, delight customers, and get out of billing projects forever.
- Website
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https://schematichq.com/
External link for Schematic
- Industry
- Software Development
- Company size
- 2-10 employees
- Type
- Privately Held
- Founded
- 2023
Employees at Schematic
Updates
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𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗦𝗮𝗮𝗦 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘀? We're a happy customer of Linear, and during last week's special edition of Monetizing SaaS, we did a teardown of their pricing page and billing experience. During the recording, Giovanni discovered an awesome real-world example of feature launches tied to packaging evolution. Watch this 90-second clip. Here's what happened... Linear just launched a new feature called Customer Requests—a valuable addition for prioritization workflows. 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: 🔹The Feature Rollout Experience: Linear introduced a polished in-app flow to showcase the feature—complete with a clear CTA and video demo. 🔹Tied to Packaging Migration: Enabling the feature wasn’t about paying more; they gave us the option to move to a new version of our existing plan—a thoughtful nudge to migrate customers off a legacy plan. 🔹Custom Purchasing Experience: Instead of routing us to a standard Stripe checkout (a “vanilla Stripe” flow they previously used), Linear built a custom modal flow so that we, the customer, could self-manage our legacy plan and migrate seamlessly onto a new plan. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆? New features are opportunities to evolve packaging and migrate customers—without friction. Linear executed this by: 1. Communicating the feature clearly (premium experience). 2. Incentivizing plan migration with both an option that was cost neutral, as well as an upgrade. 3. Building a custom purchasing experience to give their end customer the ability to easily manage upgrade/downgrade. For SaaS startups, this is a playbook to adopt: Use feature launches as levers for pricing & packaging iteration, including migrations to normalize & rationalize SKUs.
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Finding a price metric that works for your market is one of the most important discoveries & decisions founders make. Great story from Jake Stein about Common Paper 's path to the price metric that aligned most intuitively with their market's perception of value.
Co-founder & CEO of Schematic | helping startups manage features, entitlements, plans, and limits
𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗮𝗮𝗦 𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲: 𝗝𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗶𝗻, 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿/𝗖𝗘𝗢 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗼𝗻 𝗣𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗿 Jake has built not one but three successful startups. RJ Metrics, Stitch (both acquired) and now Common Paper . He brings incredible lived experience to founding companies & building and pricing software. In this episode, we cover a ton of surface area: • Why contracts should be treated like APIs. • The journey to finding a pricing metric that works for your market. • The psychology of creating standards and why it’s similar to category creation. • Lessons learned from underestimating industry shifts—and why "columnar databases are the sh*t." • When Jake started to believe rationally in Common Paper's potential. In the 17-second clip below, Jake describes a pivotal pricing moment: how switching from customer-based to seat-based pricing eliminated 90% of pricing questions and unlocked simplicity, clarity, and happier customers. This was one of my favorite conversations. Watch or listen to the full episode now 👇 🎥 Youtube: https://lnkd.in/enCSbiWu 🎙️Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eQBgGW8d 🍏 Apple: https://lnkd.in/eTfgptFm Last but not least, we're happy Common Paper customers. If you're not using them for contracts, highly recommend checking them out.
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Schematic reposted this
“I have a usage-based billing issue, but I don’t have an accounting problem. I have an iteration problem.” We heard this quote from a founder recently, and it perfectly captures a pain point we hear over and over: billing isn’t just about accounting — it’s about product and iteration. Point solutions on the market for usage-based billing are great, but miss the point for many. Startups are constantly testing new pricing models: usage-based, seat-based, hybrid models, and more. Each iteration is an opportunity to learn from the market and unlock the next wave of growth — but only if you can move quickly enough. The problem? - Billing setups in SaaS are deeply coupled with code. - Changing pricing can take days (or weeks or months) - Engineering resources get sucked into the wrong places At Schematic, we believe billing should be flexible, fast, and not in the critical path with engineering— so pricing becomes a creative lever.
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Schematic reposted this
Co-founder & CEO of Schematic | helping startups manage features, entitlements, plans, and limits
Should we offer a generous free tier to drive adoption, or take the standard advice, which is to prove greater willingness to pay? How should we negotiate price with larger customers? What are the questions we need to be asking larger customers to inform non-standard pricing? Early pricing and packaging decisions are some of the hardest choices for startup founders. Great speaking with Edward Frazer about DryMerge's journey.
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"What actions do you take when your customers exceed their entitlements? Don't let the default behavior define their experience." - Bill Tarr
Co-founder & CEO of Schematic | helping startups manage features, entitlements, plans, and limits
Cursor's pricing page has a good FAQ and I like their style
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🔥 🔥 💯
Do all products need a customer portal? Specifically, do sales-led companies need to provide one? The usual story: A new customer is closed, they need a custom plan, limits, features, etc. They're in the product and if they have questions or want to expand, they'll reach out. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗲𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵. • Did you need engineering time to provision the customer? Will you need to interrupt them again to make an update? • Is the customer aware of their usage vs. their limits (ie using 5/6 seats) • Is the customer able to opt into new feature you're shipping? • If the customer needs a feature or a limit increased to be unblocked, do they have to reach out? 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼 𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀-𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗱𝗼? • Provide transparency in their product on usage, billing, and access • Allow customers to try out new features on their own • Allow customers to pay to bump limits on their own • Arm their sellers with visibility into customer usage of their plan and features at all times, not just time of renewal Sales-led companies - why aren't you giving you providing a customer portal? If you are - I'd love to see it!
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Schematic reposted this
Co-founder & CEO of Schematic | helping startups manage features, entitlements, plans, and limits
🛠️ Mintlify Pricing Page & Billing: Key Takeaways This week on Monetizing SaaS, we released a special edition episode for folks obsessed with SaaS pricing and user experience. The episode is focused on a deep dive into Mintlify’s pricing page and billing experience, breaking down: - How they communicate value through pricing. - How they approach purchasing workflows, from signup to upgrade. - What's really impressive & where there's potential opportunity. This teardown features observations from Schematic’s founding team: 🔹 Benjamin on technical considerations. 🔹 Jasdeep on pricing strategy. 🔹 Giovanni on design and usability. One thing that was notable was that within a week of studying their pricing page, a couple of material changes were made, highlighting Mintlify's commitment to iterating on pricing & packaging and investing in conversion rate optimization on their pricing page. Other takeaways and observations: What They Do Well: 🔹 Clear, Developer-Friendly Design: A clean layout makes it easy for users to self-identify needs and pick the right plan. 🔹 Strong Brand & Social Proof: Great design and trust signals like logos reinforce credibility. 🔹Accessible Free Tier: Features like custom domains add real value, lowering adoption barriers. Where we think they have opportunity: 🔹Customer portal: Add-ons lack self-serve options, and billing visibility is limited. 🔹Unclear Value Proposition: Pricing page assumes user familiarity but could better explain Mintlify’s offering & differentiation. 🔹Limited Expansion Paths: More value-based metrics beyond editor seats could drive retention and growth. Full episode linked in comments.
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"Price AI like we price human reasoning, which means the closest value anchor we have is labor or salary."
Co-founder & CEO of Schematic | helping startups manage features, entitlements, plans, and limits
As we move from automation to reasoning, how do you price AI products? I asked Ismail Pelaseyed this question on our podcast. Ismail is a multi-time founder, multi-time CTO, and YC alum, currently building Superagent (YC W24) to bring AI-powered compliance to enterprises. I loved his take on AI pricing. Price AI like we price human reasoning, which means the closest value anchor we have is labor or salary. Here’s why: 1️⃣ 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. The true value of AI isn’t in replacing repetitive tasks—it’s in augmenting or replicating reasoning. "Think about how humans charge for reasoning today: through salaries." 2️⃣ 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗲-𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴. While tokens or seats might work for automation, they’re imperfect proxies for the value AI delivers. This was one of my favorite conversations. Ismail’s journey spans non-profit ed-tech, e-commerce, SaaS, and now AI. Key takeaways from our conversation: 𝟭. 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗜 𝘃𝗶𝗮 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 — Instead of focusing on tokens or usage, think about the value AI creates in terms of human reasoning that has been replaced or augmented. 𝟮. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 — Companies will have to view AI as more than a software purchase, and instead as a way to rethink organizational efficiency and structure. 𝟯. 𝗜𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲, 𝗜𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲, 𝗜𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 — Building startups, at any point, but especially now requires rapid iteration. From customer feedback to pricing strategy, competitiveness is a function of iteration speed. I could have asked Ismail questions for another two hours. Was such a fun conversation and the episode is great for founders building & pricing products the age of AI. Watch or listen to the full episode now 👇 🎥 Youtube: https://lnkd.in/eyBaWXv5 🎙️Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eBdAUhXY 🍏 Apple: https://lnkd.in/ejBnyNjD
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"Combining feature management and pricing & packaging." Huge thank you to Bill Tarr for the shout out at Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent 2024. Highly recommend his entire presentation "SaaS architecture pitfalls: Lessons from the field."(Link in comments) And if you want to tune into his overview of what we're building, start at minute 42:49. Love his framing. ...What's different is the ability to extend feature flags beyond deployment & rollout and into pricing & packaging...Decoupling pricing & packaging from application code, so business users can manage pricing & packaging flexibly, and developers don't have to be pulled into pricing and billing initiatives...
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