Should You Raise Your SaaS Prices?
· MentorClone Team
Ask most founders if you should raise your price and you'll hear "probably." That's usually right and almost never useful.
Rob Walling (Drip, TinySeed, MicroConf, the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast) and Arvid Kahl (FeedbackPanda, Podscan, The Bootstrapped Founder) have answered this in public for years. They mostly agree. They also both added caveats that get lost when their advice is repeated secondhand.
Every quote below is word for word from the sources behind their MentorClone topic pages, Rob Walling on SaaS business models and pricing and Arvid Kahl on SaaS pricing strategies. Each one links to the original.
How to tell you're underpriced
Rob's test is the simplest one you'll find:
"if you're not getting any complaints about price, then your price is too low"
Startups for the Rest of Us, Episode 702 (February 2024)
Silence isn't approval. If every prospect pays without a word, you have room. A few complaints mean you're near the edge.
Arvid says early prices are usually low for a bad reason. You were new, and you priced like it:
"Early bootstrapped pricing is often too low. Don't discount yourself. Just because you're starting a new business doesn't mean you'll have to scrape the bottom of the barrel"
The Bootstrapped Founder, "Price Is Not Set In Stone" (May 2020)
Same article, on why it hurts later:
"choosing a low price, in the beginning, will prevent you from ever meaningfully increase your revenue through price adjustments"
Later he put it more bluntly:
"Underpricing is self-sabotage. It reduces the quality perception of your prospects. If something is too cheap, they'll consider it a sub-par product."
The Bootstrapped Founder, "Pricing for Calm SaaS Businesses" (October 2022)
He also gives you a way to think about losing customers when you raise:
"if you could charge twice as much and only have 20% of your customers churn, you are currently leaving money on the table that should be yours and would even ultimately increase the perceived value of your services."
"Pricing for Calm SaaS Businesses" (October 2022)
Run your own numbers. If doubling the price and losing a fifth of your customers still leaves more revenue and fewer accounts to support, the expensive price is the safe one.
How much it matters
Rob came back to pricing in a 2026 episode about the start of a TinySeed batch:
"The thing I want to call out is that pricing is the biggest lever in SaaS. And if it's messed up, for example, if you're 5x underpriced what you could be charging, you will build a $250,000 business at best when it should be a $1.25 million business"
Episode 838, "6 Key Takeaways From a TinySeed Batch Kick-Off" (June 2026)
Same episode, and this is the part worth rereading:
"About 80% of any batch has an issue with their pricing. Sometimes they need to raise it. Sometimes their pricing is just too complicated and they need to dramatically simplify it. Other times their value metric is off"
If your pricing feels wrong, the number might be fine. Too many tiers or the wrong value metric can look exactly like a price problem.
How to raise it
Arvid on what FeedbackPanda did when it raised prices by half:
"Here is what we did at FeedbackPanda when we increased our prices by 50%: we allowed our legacy customers to keep their old prices for a year and then adjusted them to the new price. We also used that announcement as a last-minute opportunity for monthly customers to upgrade to annual pricing, locking in the previous lower price for a year"
"Pricing for Calm SaaS Businesses" (October 2022)
That's three moves in one announcement. Existing customers get a year at the old price, then move. Monthly customers get a reason to switch to annual now. And nobody keeps the old price forever. In a 2020 article about pricing his next product, Arvid wrote: "I won't make the mistake of grandfathering users indefinitely again this time around." (source)
He expects customers to accept the increase if the product keeps getting better:
"With enough value nurturing, customers will understand that a continuously maintained and updated SaaS product warrants a price increase"
"Price Is Not Set In Stone" (May 2020)
If you sell annual B2B contracts, Rob's standard advice turns the whole thing into a clause:
"with companies that I advise that are selling into the enterprise that are actually doing annual contracts, it's standard recommendation at this point to say if you're signing an annual contract with a customer, build in an annual price increase, five to 10% is the rule of thumb"
Episode 646, "Building a Recurring, Annual Price Increase Into Your SaaS" (January 2023)
One painful event a year becomes a routine line in every agreement.
How it goes wrong
This is the part "just raise your prices" advice skips. Rob, from a solo episode in 2025:
"a lot of folks are undercharging when they start with TinySeed. And of all the times that TinySeed companies have decided to raise their pricing, I believe I've only seen one maybe two times where that was a mistake"
And what those mistakes looked like:
"they went, not even upmarket, but they just raised their pricing 20, 30, 40% and it was a mistake and it kind of wrecked their funnel and they realized, oh, we outpaced the market and our customer base or our competitors or whatever the pricing is in this space doesn't support that"
Episode 785 (July 2025)
So raising usually works. Watch your funnel afterward. If trials or conversions drop hard and stay down, you've outrun what your market will pay.
Your numbers change the answer
A post can only give you their general advice. Your market, your churn, your competitors and how long customers stay all move the answer.
Tell Rob Walling's AI mentor or Arvid Kahl's AI mentor where you stand ("40 customers at $29 a month, nobody has complained") and you get a straight recommendation built from their own words, each point linked to where they said it. It remembers your product for next time. If neither of them ever covered your case, it tells you.
Why that beats asking a chatbot to play Rob: AI Mentor vs an 'Act as Rob Walling' Prompt.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Rob Walling think most SaaS founders should raise prices?
In his public episodes he says many founders undercharge, especially early, and that pricing is the biggest lever in SaaS. He also describes cases where raising 20 to 40 percent hurt a company's funnel because it outpaced the market.
How did Arvid Kahl raise prices at FeedbackPanda?
He raised prices by 50 percent, let existing customers keep their old price for a year before moving them, and offered monthly customers a chance to switch to annual pricing at the old rate.
Should I grandfather existing customers forever?
Arvid Kahl wrote in 2020 that he would not grandfather users indefinitely again. At FeedbackPanda he gave existing customers a one-year window instead.
Are these quotes accurate?
Every quote here is word for word from the sources stored behind the founders' MentorClone topic pages, and each one links to the original article or episode.
Is MentorClone affiliated with Rob Walling or Arvid Kahl?
No. The mentors are built from their public work. They didn't write or endorse them.