Pricing and packaging are front and center for me right now, and we're having many discussions about it at Buffer. Simon, our Director of Growth Marketing, is leading the effort. You should follow him if you are interested in growth. He’s amazing.

I see packaging not only as a powerful growth lever but also as a way to stand out in a landscape where SaaS features are quickly replicated and products are increasingly commoditized.

With that in mind, let’s dive into this month’s newsletter.

A stroll down memory lane 🚶‍♂️

I thought it might be interesting to look back at how Buffer’s pricing and packaging have evolved over the past decade. I haven’t included every iteration or experiment - just the major updates.

2012: A SaaS product is born

This is Buffer’s pricing page in 2012. There are three plans, usage-based tiers, and an annual discount. These are still standard practices for SaaS products 12 years later.

Some additional context: Buffer was making about $200k per year in revenue with a team of less than five people. The “direct line to founder” on the Premium plan is an interesting touch.

2015: Enterprise enters the chat

As the company grew, so did the number of plans. I joined the company around this time. Buffer’s annual revenue was $10m with 50 employees.

Again, the plans are primarily differentiated by usage limits rather than feature-gating, but we see the introduction of two distinct target customers; individuals and teams. We also see the introduction of Enterprise, another staple move in the SaaS playbook.

Although I’m not sure what skateboarding had to do with anything!

2019: Multi-product mayhem

In 2019 we unbundled features into three distinct products, each sold separately. Our original publishing features were packaged together into three plans. We rebranded our engagement features and packaged them into a new product called Reply, with two plan options. And we rebuilt our analytics and sold them separately on a single “Premium” plan.

Sound confusing? It was. We also de-emphasized our Free plan.

It coincided with a big spike in revenue growth — all of a sudden, we were selling many SKUs at higher price points and diverting all signups onto paid plans. But it precipitated a steady decline in new user growth and ultimately revenue.

2021: Back to the future

Our multi-product strategy wasn’t working, for reasons that deserve their own post, so I won’t go into them here. In 2021, we rebundled everything into a single plan and reintroduced our Free plan.

We also added a differentiator—"per-channel" pricing. Unlike our competitors, who required users to purchase channel "bundles," we offered flexibility with individual channel options.

2023: Pick your perfect plan

Our recommitment to a freemium model with simpler value-based pricing was beginning to pay off. Average revenue per user remained flat but new user growth re-ignited. We started winning the lower end of the market again and today we are back to growth and profitability.

We made some adjustments to pricing, introducing a volume discount for our largest customers and adding a calculator to our pricing page. This was partly based on feedback from customer support that per-channel pricing was confusing some of our users.

Zags that helped Buffer grow 💪

SaaS pricing is usually fairly formulaic and for good reason. The primary goal is to turn prospects into customers and, above all, drive revenue. For growth practitioners, pricing pages are sacred, and packaging is one of the most complex, cross-functional, and challenging levers to adjust, let alone fully utilize.

But therein lies the opportunity.

I don’t think we ever broke serious new ground at Buffer, but I do believe we did some things that were considered unusual at the time and helped us stand out:

1. Transparent pricing. We made our pricing transparent and even broke down where your money goes when you purchase a Buffer subscription.

2. Strong freemium offering. Most of our largest competitors went upmarket and removed or restricted their free plans. We explored this path but ultimately found that we were uniquely suited to serving the lower end of the market through a freemium model. This coincided with the boom of the creator economy, enabling us to capture a large share of “entry-level” creators.

   

3. Per-channel pricing. Pricing that scales up and down based on usage isn’t unique but I believe we were the first to implement “channels” (aka integrations) as a scalable pricing dimension. We recognized that people don’t want to pay for integrations they don’t need. Others have since followed.

The next iteration 🔜 

For the next iteration of our pricing and packaging, we’re aiming to address three issues.

1. Users want a lighter-weight paid plan option. Our lowest paid tier is “too powerful”.

2. Our upgrade ladders are a bit random. Some features are completely gated, some are completely free, and others have usage limits.

3. Our packaging is too prescriptive. Our freemium strategy should enable any type of user to grow from the free plan up to the highest-paid plan. This means our plans should be less persona-based and differentiated by usage limits instead.

Instead of addressing each one individually, we’re taking a holistic approach and trying to rethink our pricing and packaging from first principles. It may take us a little longer this way, but ultimately it feels like the right thing to do.

I’ll report back with the results.

Chaos packaging? 🤯 

I often draw inspiration from FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) marketing, where brands have long mastered the art of capturing attention and building loyalty. Take a moment next time you're in the grocery aisle: when you reach for a specific protein bar or laundry detergent, consider why you chose that brand over the others. It’s likely no accident; everything from the color, design, and even the shape of the package has been meticulously crafted to draw you in.

But there’s one recent trend that I’m particularly enamored with. It’s called “chaos packaging”.

It’s a bold, ironic approach where brands intentionally mimic the packaging styles of entirely unrelated products. Think about it: tampons packaged like ice cream, coffee in toothpaste tubes, or sports drinks in handwash dispensers. These packaging zags do more than grab attention—they spark curiosity and encourage people to rethink familiar products, capturing valuable mindshare in otherwise crowded, commoditized categories.

There’s a lesson here for SaaS. How can we “merchandize” our software to stand out in a landscape where products look and feel the same? Could we borrow from the unexpected in FMCG, creating experiences or visuals that draw users in by breaking familiar patterns?

Thanks for reading.

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