It’ll be almost a year since the first prototype of TensorCharts (TC) was released. Now it’s time to move TC to another phase and with your help, create the best trading platform for crypto and beyond.
Monetization has always been a pain point for me. I love building products, but thinking about pricing, paid plans, upselling and what not is killing me. But it needs to be done. Great products don’t come for free.
PRICING DATA
Few days ago, we ran a survey out of which we gathered hundreds of responses on customer satisfaction and value based price sensitivity (Van Westendorp methodology). I will reveal the complete results of the survey in the upcoming weeks, but let’s focus on price related questions for now, we asked:
(Too expensive)
At what price would you think TC to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it?
(Too cheap)
At what price would you think TC to be so cheap that you would question the quality?
(Expensive/High Side)
At what price would you think TC is starting to get expensive, but you would still consider it?
(Good Value)
At what price would you think TC to be a bargain—a great buy for the money?
Thanks to the great TC community, we were able to collect statistically significant data. Some answers were filtered/removed if:
- “high side” was greater than “too expensive”
- “too expensive” was less than 3 dollars (outliers, don’t see value in TC)
- “too expensive” was greater than 150 dollars (outliers, top 99 percentile)
- “good value” less or equal to 0
- incomplete answers
- delete “too cheap” column (not useful for a webapp)
I won’t dive into the specifics of Van Westendorp methodology, but the result was quite clear. Intersections of each category define optimal price range.
TensorCharts optimal price lies in between $20 and $30 per month. About 35% of users would find $20 a “good value” and it would still be an acceptable price for 65%.
NO PRICE FITS ALL
In the last 8 months, I’ve spent hours talking to you, users of TensorCharts and realized crypto traders are a very diverse group of people. Some very wealthy, long-term profitable, on the other hand most of you struggling or losing great amount of money. I do believe TC can help people see unseen and change the way they look at trading.
It’s hard to justify $20 per month for those losing though, even if it helps them get out of their losing streak. That’s why we tried to come up with a business model which wouldn’t disqualify newcomers or losing traders.
We played quite a bit with the idea of fully customizable TC, where you would pay very low starting fee and only pay few cents for each feature you selected. This way, you could test all features without paying a high priced full featured plan. But it felt too complicated, with too many options leading to decision paralysis.
PAID PLANS v0.1
We ended up with a completely different and also not very common pricing model. I’ve always loved Spotify pricing with its free, premium and family plan and that’s where we got the inspiration.
TensorCharts will offer a FREE plan, with no advanced features, but you’ll get the order flow experience. Newcomers will be able to see trades and orderbook heatmaps. If they decide to move their game to another level, they can choose from two paid plans, PREMIUM ($18) and TEAM ($8 per user). You’ll get all advanced features and fast/good data update rate in both plans. In TEAM, you can save more than 55% if you find 4 more traders for your team, compared to PREMIUM model.
If you look again at the price sensitivity chart, 83% of users think $8 is a “good value”. Also according to our survey, 68% of users believe TC is better than competitors (25% thinks we are equal) but $8 is way under any other competitor out there.
Maybe we are fools, but it feels just right at this moment.
QUICK OVERVIEW
For full overview, you can check out this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lLV9o4i3JzcW1oB5qLayphra22SPWGyLtyfO5Ef9p8I/edit?usp=sharing
FINAL NOTES
We’ve tried really hard to come up with an affordable yet still financially sustainable business model which won’t limit newcomers or losing traders. I would love to hear your thoughts, pricing is an ongoing process and we welcome any suggestions, input or ideas. You can contact me at [email protected] or via Discord.
Payment processing and paid plans will be implemented in the next 2-3 weeks, supporting crypto payments only.
Have a good one,
David.
