Where should a solo founder start with pricing?
Start with the customer task, the current alternative, and your cost of delivering a reliable result. Choose a charging unit a buyer can understand and relate to value. A flat subscription, per-seat plan, and usage allowance create different commitments. There is no universal starting price or margin that fits every micro SaaS.
How do you estimate the cost of a plan?
List hosting, storage, third-party usage, payment processing, and the support time required at the proposed usage level. Include retries and unsuccessful AI requests when your providers charge for them. As a fictional arithmetic example, a 20-unit monthly price with 6 units of variable costs leaves 14 before fixed costs, founder time, taxes, and other expenses. That is a planning example, not a margin forecast or a recommendation for a particular currency.
Should you offer a free plan or a trial?
Choose the experience that lets a suitable customer evaluate the result without creating an unsustainable delivery burden. A trial needs a clear duration, limits, and an explanation of what happens afterward. A free plan needs a durable reason to exist and manageable abuse controls. Show payment requirements before signup. Ask pilot participants which limit prevents a useful evaluation, rather than making every feature free by default.
How should you test and explain the offer?
Present a small number of understandable choices and record objections, trial completion, paid adoption, and support effort. Change one major assumption at a time where practical; small samples give directional evidence rather than precise estimates. Explain the billing period, included usage, overages, renewal, and cancellation path. Follow the pricing-page guide to make these facts visible. Review whether customers obtain the intended result through the retention workflow before expanding acquisition.