Hi Kane,

Thank you for your inquiry. My name is Justin and I am a member of Stack Ideas' marketing team. I've checked on the pricing plan and to be honest, we are planning on revamping the plans especially the bundles.

But to explain the current pricing plan, the bundles is a special promo that we offer to our new customers that wishes to purchase multiple components. The bundles is discounted roughly 15% from the total price.

I will discuss about the bundle's pricing plan with my superior and will take ample action to balance out all of the plans.

As for your second inquiry, should you use the 30% discount code on your renewal purchases, it will renew your licenses from the day it expires. However, should you purchase a new bundle using the 30% discount code, you will be given a new set of licenses for the bundle. Due to the fact that the bundle is already discounted, we won't be able to change the bundle's purchase to a renewal.

Hope this clears up the confusion. Do let me know if there's anything more that I can assist you with.

Its such a common thing with insurance these days as an example - the lower cost reflects the company trying to get people on board and to a degree that makes sense to me - and helps keep this great software alive and kicking - so long as they keep their pricing ok for hobbyist sites I'm ok with it - the thought of migrating if they get too big for their boots is not something Id like to contemplate - I got really fed up with jomsocial for this reason - their support was locked down and their pricing got too high for a hobbyist. Also a hobbyist site doesn't seem to get much user interaction people are into their own facebooks to see the value and they need compelling to do something on your site...so the cost to benefit was too low. Am considering to pull the jomsocial element out of a few sites that clearly isn't working. It is working more for others like Style Review.

Thank you for your opinion, calvin.

Pricing is something which is very tricky; we want it to be affordable for our users and at the same time we want it to be justified with our work. I'll discuss this with the team.

Thx for your response Ahmad. In the end, I went with the Christmas special. I lost two months, but a difference of $63 made the numbers work, plus aligns me with potential deals next Christmas.

What Calvin says is true. Just like the individual, a company will look at the numbers and go with what is financially the best for them. And if there are few alternatives, a higher pricing is often justified. The problem is, this makes a current customer feel "locked in". When someone feels locked in, they will often look for alternatives, even lesser alternatives sometimes.

There is a psychology to pricing, and it is often relative. It is a human tendency to look to the next person to see what they are getting and compare. Even if a person was originally perfectly content with what they are getting, if they see another is getting a better deal, it will invoke disappointment. This is compounded with the belief that an existing customer should have preferential treatment so a deal that excludes them is especially upsetting. Outside of the primary issue that new customer bundle rates are lower than individually priced renewal rates, discounted bundles not accessible to current customers is just bad pricing policy.

I would assume that a significant percentage of the people on the mailing list are current customers. This proves to be an issue with deals being sent out to everyone. Other than fixing the bundle/renewal pricing issue, it might be wise to filter promotions into existing/new potential lists, Or, make an offer for both existing customers and new potential customers. Even a new potential that sees preferential treatment to existing customers will be inspired to join. imho.

Hi Kane,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and insight on this. I agree with you idea; apart from revising the pricing plan I am also jotting down the plan for promotions.

I am particularly interested in the psychological of pricing plans. Do you have any articles link or journals that I can look up to?

There is a lot of fantastic research available on the psychology of pricing. The first link is very interesting and provides more links of studies. The second link has more to do with comparative pricing. The last link is an example of what to avoid, namely, charging existing customers more.

http://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-psychology-of-pricing--cms-22206
https://shopventory.com/blog/laws-of-price-strategy/
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-behavioral-psychology-of-netflixs-plan-to-charge-higher-prices/283367/

have fun

Thanks Kane!

Will be reading up those articles before we make our decisions.