I want to raise prices. What happens to the customers who are already paying me, and should I grandfather them?

The most sympathetic answer to this question: raise on new customers, leave the early believers alone while you are growing fast, and if you must move them, give six months or more on the old price as a thank you for taking a risk on you.

Dear SaaStr: How Do You Change the Price of Your SaaS Product Without Upsetting Existing Customers?

From SaaStr by Jason Lemkin 6 min read

• Default answer: raise prices on new customers only, which forces you to deliver more value for the higher price.
• If you must move existing customers, give them six months or more on old pricing as a thank you.
• Do not raise prices because growth slowed and you are out of ideas, that is a short term patch.
• Angering early customers costs referrals and second order revenue, which usually exceeds the bump.

Worked examples rather than theory, across hundreds of tracked price changes: who repackaged well (Ahrefs, Loom, Pipedrive), who took the backlash (Docker at 67 to 80 percent), and what separated them. Read it to calibrate how big a move you can make.

The good, bad and ugly of SaaS pricing changes

From Growth Unhinged by Rob Litterst and John Kotowski 12 min read

• PricingSaaS tracked 339 changes across the top SaaS companies in one year: 126 pricing updates and 213 packaging updates.
• Pipedrive added an Enterprise plan to anchor high, making the Professional tier look like the sensible buy.
• Docker raised Pro 80 percent and Team 67 percent but left Business flat, missing its least price sensitive segment.
• Zapier's new Professional plan shipped the same functionality at a 61 percent discount, roughly 30 dollars of price left behind.

A primary source rather than commentary: how India's largest software company actually told customers about a 15 percent rise. Note the mechanics worth copying, a hard cap on the increase, no change until renewal, and a window to lock in the old price for another year.

Zoho Price Change Notice

From Zoho 5 min read

• Zoho gave months of public notice before the change took effect, with a stated scope of which regions were excluded.
• Existing subscribers were held on old pricing until their renewal, roughly nine months out.
• Any single invoice increase was capped at 15 percent, so no customer got a shock bill.
• Customers who renewed before the cutover could lock the current price for the first year of a multi year contract.

Batti walks through narrowing GTM, choosing the US over India, a Fortune 10 customer landed at $25 a month, and running sales teams in both countries. One of the few Indian accounts that covers category creation and enterprise motion in the same conversation.

How Khadim Batti Built Whatfix Into a ~$900 Million Global SaaS Leader

On Prime Venture Partners Podcast by Khadim Batti ~60 min

A company with millions of users describing how it moved existing customers onto a new pricing model, including the test that went wrong. The most useful part is how they handled the people already paying rather than the new plan itself.

Zapier’s Pricing Transformation: From Testing Gone Wrong to Usage-Based Wins | Beelieve 2025

On Chargebee by Zapier monetization team 35 min