North Metric Team

I've been delaying a price hike for months out of fear of mass churn. We finally decided to bump our rates by 30% and gave current users a two month grace period before the change kicks in. We sent a simple direct email explaining that our server costs went up and surprisingly not a single person canceled.

But now I'm wondering if giving people a two month window just leaves the door open for them to shop around for alternatives.

When you bumped your pricing how long of a buffer did you give existing clients?

I'd been putting this off for eight months. Every time I opened the pricing page I closed it again. Last month I finally did it 40% across all plans, grandfathered existing users for 60 days, and sent a plain-text email to 312 customers.

Zero churned. Three replied thanking me. One asked why I hadn't done it sooner.

The email wasn't clever. It was four paragraphs: what's changing, when, why (I was honest support load had tripled), and what stays the same. No "exciting news" language, no discount code to soften it.

I'm posting because I see a lot of "should I raise prices" threads and almost no "here's what actually happened" threads. So: what actually happened, with numbers.

Quick poll for founders (and anyone who tests out new SaaS tools): do you ask for a credit card upfront, or let people straight in?

We went with requiring a card for k dlo. The thinking was pretty simple: fewer signups overall, but higher intent people actually kick the tires instead of bouncing after two minutes. Without a card, you get a flood of accounts that log in once and ghost.

But I m genuinely torn here. A card wall definitely kills casual curiosity, especially when you're an unknown product. On the flip side, no-card trials often just give you vanity metrics that don't convert.

Two quick questions: