Money, Pricing & Model

My biggest customer is asking for a custom price and features nobody else wants. Do I say yes?

A starting point

Say yes to the money, but be very careful about the features, one buyer's wishlist can quietly turn your roadmap into their internal tools team. Charge enough that the custom work is clearly worth it, and prefer building things that could serve other customers later over one-off asks that only they will ever use. If they want a truly bespoke product, price it like consulting, not like your SaaS.

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📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Why we picked it This is the exact question you are asking, answered by someone who has sold a lot of enterprise software. Lemkin gives you a usable rule instead of platitudes: say yes when the feature is reusable by other customers and fits your next 24 months of roadmap, charge for it either as a one-time fee or a higher annual price, and cap the share of engineering you spend on any one big deal. It is a starting point for turning a gut call into a repeatable filter.

Dear SaaStr: Our Biggest Customers Are All Asking for Custom Features. When Do We Say Yes?

From SaaStr by Jason Lemkin

  • Say yes mainly when the requested feature can be sold to other customers and already fits your roughly 24-month roadmap, not because one account is loud or large.
  • Price the custom work, either as a one-time fee or baked into a higher annual contract, so bespoke building at least breaks even instead of quietly becoming a cost center.
  • Put a ceiling on it: allow only a small slice of engineering (he suggests around 10 percent of story points) for big-deal customization, and do one or two at a time so the roadmap stays yours.
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✍️ Essay
Free Intermediate

Why we picked it Before you say yes to the custom features nobody else wants, this essay makes you sit with the real risk: one account that pays a lot can quietly take over your roadmap and turn you into its in-house vendor. McAfee tells the story of a company that let one customer reach 80 percent of revenue, bent the product to that customer's demands, and collapsed when the customer's funding dried up. It is a starting point for weighing when a big customer's asks are worth it and when they are a trap dressed as a win.

The One Big Customer Trap

From Startup Patterns (Medium) by Sam McAfee

  • A single dominant customer can mask the fact that you do not yet have real product-market fit, so the revenue feels like validation when it is actually dependence.
  • Every custom request pulls capacity away from the product you meant to build; if you lose that one customer, you lose the revenue and the roadmap you traded away for it.
  • Keep some engineering capacity reserved for work that serves the whole market, not just your biggest account, and be wary of open-ended custom scopes.
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