4d ago

Canva: When freemium finishes its job, what replaces it?

Canva's free plan has already reached almost everyone it was ever going to reach. Canva says 95 percent of the Fortune 500 use it, and that is the moment most freemium companies never plan for: the free tier stops being an acquisition engine and turns into a conversion problem, with growth having to come from the users already inside rather than from new ones. This episode breaks down the live Canva pricing page to see how a company monetises a base it has already saturated, from where the friction sits on the free plan to the six pricing changes tracked this year, including an A/B test on the annual Pro price. At Canva's traffic, rapid pricing experimentation genuinely works, which exposes the harder question underneath it: experimentation optimises the structure you already have, and never asks whether the structure is the right one. Then the AI layer, where SaaS pricing gets genuinely hard. Canva replaced a vague ladder of limited, high and higher AI access with AI allowances: three tiers of AI usage, a 40x AI Pass add-on, and no credit balance anywhere. It is more confusing than a credit model, and that looks deliberate. Credits imply you can always buy more, and they put a meter in front of a designer who is halfway through something, so the complexity moved to Canva's side of the table while a cost grid behind the label does the job credits would have done. Underneath sits an asymmetry with no clean answer: across the AI products we work on, roughly 1 percent of users consume the bulk of the AI cost, while in design tools a large share never touch the features at all. Add Claude Design turning out a report draft that beat a professional design team, and Canva ends up retroactively wrapping an LLM whose costs it also has to reprice around. Whether it can hold a simple allowance model while its own costs track someone else's infrastructure is the question. Pricing Page unPacked takes a real company's pricing page and breaks down the decisions behind it, the trade offs, and what it says about how the company actually wants to grow. Hosted by Rob Litterst and Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt For more information, catch us on https://www.willingnesstopay.com/

Sep 2

Okta: A la carte, bundles and AI agents

You spend a tremendous amount of time convincing a robot that you are not a robot. That is Okta from the outside. From the inside it is one of the better pricing stories in enterprise software right now. Okta sold identity the way a restaurant sells a menu, single sign on for a couple of dollars per user per month, then multi factor authentication, universal directory, workflows, device trust and about twenty other things. Each one felt cheap, and together they carried the company past 18.000 customers at just under 150.000 dollars a year each. In Q2 of 2025 they stopped and made curated bundles the default instead, and Rob Litterst and Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt take the live pricing page apart to work out why. The answer is not that a la carte failed. It worked so well the product portfolio outgrew the sales motion that built it. What follows is the more for more repackaging that lets a company reprice its entire installed base in one move, and then the part nobody has solved yet, because Okta's newer products are priced per device, per API call and per machine to machine token, and the whole model assumes a user is a person. Agents are about to make that false. Ulrik ends up split, calling the human identity half of the business a clear buy and the machine identity half a sell, not because the technology is weak but because Okta will not say what any of it costs. Pricing Page unPacked takes a real company's pricing page and breaks down the decisions behind it, the trade offs, and what it says about how the company actually wants to grow. Hosted by Rob Litterst and Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt For more information, catch us on https://www.willingnesstopay.com/

Aug 19

Salesforce: Pricing the Agentic AI Era (and Why It's Complicated)

Salesforce pulls in $35B in revenue but spends roughly $4.50 to acquire every $1 of growth - a byproduct of decades of "commercial debt" built into its seat-based pricing and sprawling product suite. Ulrik and Rob break down how Agentforce is testing consumption-based, credit-based, and outcome-based pricing all at once, why the "digital labor" pricing anchor is such a smart move, and why they land on a sell rating for Salesforce's pricing strategy. A must-listen for anyone thinking about SaaS pricing in the agentic AI era. Pricing Page unPacked takes a real company's pricing page and breaks down the decisions behind it, the trade offs, and what it says about how the company actually wants to grow. Hosted by Rob Litterst and Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt For more information, catch us on https://www.willingnesstopay.com/

Jul 8 · Bonus

SUMMER BREAK - we're back on August 19

We're on a summer break until August 19! Catch us on PricingSaaS.com or the Willingness To Pay YouTube channel for content if you can't wait for more pricing insights before we're back. Pricing Page unPacked takes a real company's pricing page and breaks down the decisions behind it, the trade offs, and what it says about how the company actually wants to grow. Hosted by Rob Litterst and Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt For more information, catch us on https://www.willingnesstopay.com/

Jun 24

Intercom (now Fin): Pricing the work, not the software

A quick note - this episode was recorded before Intercom's name change in May 2026 and their acquisition by Salesforce in June 2026. Intercom was growing at 4% year-over-year while the median SaaS company was at 19%. Instead of optimising their way out of it, they scrapped their seat-based model entirely and rebuilt around a single metric: the resolved conversation. Rob and Ulrik tear apart how Fin AI's $0.99-per-outcome pricing works, why it's already pushing $100M ARR on its own, and where the model starts to break - including the hidden risk of a price war and the uneven value problem between a private bank and a gaming company. Topics covered: - Why outcome-based pricing works when the job-to-be-done is narrow - The seat-based model death spiral and how AI accelerated it - Fin's trojan horse GTM strategy: plug in on top of your existing helpdesk - Where the $0.99 flat rate leaves money on the table Pricing Page unPacked breaks down real SaaS pricing decisions every week - the trade-offs behind the page, not just what's on it. Pricing Page unPacked takes a real company's pricing page and breaks down the decisions behind it, the trade offs, and what it says about how the company actually wants to grow. Hosted by Rob Litterst and Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt For more information, catch us on https://www.willingnesstopay.com/

Jun 10

HubSpot: Free Entry, Sticky CRM, and the Shift to AI Credits

HubSpot is the company every SaaS startup wants to copy when it comes to pricing — but most miss why it actually works. In this episode, Rob and Ulrik unpack the full arc of HubSpot's pricing strategy: the clever two-axis model that unlocked expansion revenue, the freemium CRM launch that took on Salesforce, and the bundle mechanics that turn complexity into a math game customers enjoy playing. Then they dig into where HubSpot is heading — AI credits, agent teams, and the shift from system of record to system of action. Pricing Page unPacked takes a real company's pricing page and breaks down the decisions behind it, the trade offs, and what it says about how the company actually wants to grow. Hosted by Rob Litterst and Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt For more information, catch us on https://www.willingnesstopay.com/

May 27

Slack: The hidden costs of AI, price increases and margin impact

In this episode of Pricing Page unPacked we dive into Slack’s journey from a simple messaging app to an organizing app that can seem near ubiquitous for many industries. Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt and Rob Litterst share their insights on Slack’s AI rollout, tiered features, and dynamic pricing strategies. You’ll learn about their tiered AI features—basic summaries, advanced analytics, and enterprise-grade AI—and the surprising pricing tactics that drive user adoption while keeping margins healthy. Pricing Page unPacked takes a real company's pricing page and breaks down the decisions behind it, the trade offs, and what it says about how the company actually wants to grow. Hosted by Rob Litterst and Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt For more information, catch us on https://www.willingnesstopay.com/

May 13

Notion: Why Notion’s Pricing Works Better Than Most SaaS Companies

Notion has tens of millions of users. A huge chunk of them have never paid a dollar. And that's completely intentional. In our latest Pricing Page Unpacked episode, we dig into how Notion turned free personal users into an organic growth engine — and how that freemium model quietly spread the product across teams, departments, and entire organizations. We also get into the harder questions: • Is Notion AI priced correctly now that it's bundled into higher tiers? • What does margin pressure from AI mean for SaaS pricing broadly? • Is Notion leaving money on the table — or playing a longer game? One of the most thoughtful pricing pages in software. Here's what's behind it. Pricing Page unPacked takes a real company's pricing page and breaks down the decisions behind it, the trade offs, and what it says about how the company actually wants to grow. Hosted by Rob Litterst and Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt For more information, catch us on https://www.willingnesstopay.com/

Apr 29

Figma: AI Credits, and the Future of SaaS Pricing

In this episode of Pricing Page unPacked, we break down Figma’s pricing page and explore what its pricing strategy reveals about how the company wants to grow. We talk through Figma’s evolution from a simple design tool into a broader product suite with FigJam, Dev Mode, Slides, Sites, Make, and more. We also dig into how Figma’s seat structure works across designers, developers, and collaborators, and why that approach may be better for expansion than for new customer acquisition. We also get into one of the biggest pricing topics in SaaS right now: AI credits. We walk through how Figma is introducing AI-based packaging, why they are not fully enforcing limits yet, and what that means for cost control, user behavior, and the future of seat-based pricing. If you care about SaaS pricing, PLG, monetization, packaging strategy, or how AI is changing software business models, this episode is packed with practical insights. Pricing Page unPacked takes a real company's pricing page and breaks down the decisions behind it, the trade offs, and what it says about how the company actually wants to grow. Hosted by Rob Litterst and Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt For more information, catch us on https://www.willingnesstopay.com/

Season 1, Episode 1 Trailer

Pricing Page unPacked - trailer

Stay tuned for episode 1 on April 28. Pricing Page unPacked takes a real company's pricing page and breaks down the decisions behind it, the trade offs, and what it says about how the company actually wants to grow. Hosted by Rob Litterst and Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt For more information, catch us on https://www.willingnesstopay.com/

Pricing Page unPacked

Episodes

Canva: When freemium finishes its job, what replaces it?

Okta: A la carte, bundles and AI agents

Salesforce: Pricing the Agentic AI Era (and Why It's Complicated)

SUMMER BREAK - we're back on August 19

Intercom (now Fin): Pricing the work, not the software

HubSpot: Free Entry, Sticky CRM, and the Shift to AI Credits

Slack: The hidden costs of AI, price increases and margin impact

Notion: Why Notion’s Pricing Works Better Than Most SaaS Companies

Figma: AI Credits, and the Future of SaaS Pricing

Pricing Page unPacked - trailer

Trailer

Pricing Page unPacked - trailer

About

Information

You Might Also Like