- Published:
- App Monetization, mobile app growth, Mobile App Pricing
A note from the founder to app developers (and our competitors 🙂)
I’ve been thinking a lot about pricing lately.
Not just GoMarketMe’s pricing, but mobile app pricing and software pricing in general.
And I keep coming back to the same thought:
A lot of us are charging too little.
App developers do it. SaaS companies do it. Startups do it.
When we’re trying to grow, the instinct is often to make the product cheaper, remove as much friction as possible, and worry about the economics later.
I think that’s often the wrong approach.
The goal shouldn’t be to build the cheapest product.
The goal should be to build the better product.
The race to the bottom is easy to start
Imagine you’re launching something new.
A competitor charges $100, so you charge $50.
Another competitor charges $50, so someone launches at $20.
Then someone else makes it free.
Every step feels rational in isolation.
A lower price makes a product easier to sell. It gives a potential customer one less reason to say no.
But there’s a problem:
Cheaper isn’t the same thing as better value.
And once an entire category starts competing primarily on price, everyone has less money to improve the products they’re selling.
Eventually, there isn’t much left to compete with.
Build the better product, not the cheaper one
Apple is one of the clearest examples of the alternative.
Apple has rarely positioned its products around being the cheapest phone, computer, watch, or pair of headphones available.
Instead, it has generally tried to make people believe the product is worth paying more for through design, usability, integration, support, brand, and the overall experience.
You don’t have to agree that every Apple product is better. That’s not really the point.
The important part is the philosophy.
Instead of starting with:
“How can we make this cheaper than everyone else?”
Start with:
“How can we make this good enough that customers are happy to pay more for it?”
Those two questions lead to very different companies.
I’d rather build the second one.
Great software still costs money to build
AI is making software dramatically easier to create.
That’s exciting.
A developer can now build in weeks what might once have required a team and months of work.
But creating the first version of a product and operating a great product are very different things.
You still need:
- Engineering
- Infrastructure
- Customer support
- Security
- Monitoring
- Documentation
- Bug fixes
- Design
- New features
You need to keep up when Apple or Google changes something.
If your product integrates with companies like Stripe, RevenueCat, TikTok, or other platforms, you need to adapt when they change too.
And when something breaks for a customer, somebody needs to be there to fix it.
All of that costs money.
When a company charges too little, those costs don’t disappear.
The tradeoffs simply show up somewhere else:
- Support gets slower.
- Development slows down.
- Features stop shipping.
- Reliability suffers.
- Prices suddenly increase.
- Or, eventually, the product disappears.
Reliability has value
This matters even more when customers depend on your software to run part of their business.
Affiliate marketing for mobile apps is a good example.
If you’re trusting a platform to track referrals, attribute app installs and purchases, maintain iOS and Android SDKs, calculate commissions, generate affiliate statements, and help you manage creator partnerships, the lowest possible price probably shouldn’t be your only consideration.
You want the attribution to work.
You want the SDK to keep working after the next iOS or Android update.
You want someone to answer when you need help.
And ideally, you want the company behind the product to still be around years from now.
Reliability is part of the product.
Support is part of the product.
Continued development is part of the product.
Those things have value.
That’s how we think about pricing at GoMarketMe
We’ve deliberately made GoMarketMe easy for mobile app developers to start using.
Our Pro plan has no monthly subscription fee.
Developers can create affiliate campaigns, integrate our SDK, invite affiliates, and start building an app affiliate program without taking on another large fixed SaaS expense.
When affiliates generate sales, GoMarketMe earns a platform fee.
That’s intentional.
We like having our incentives aligned with the developers using the platform. If your affiliate program grows, we grow with you.
At the same time, we don’t think every product or feature needs to be free.
When we build additional products that create additional value, whether that’s creator discovery, outreach tools, API access, or other advanced functionality, we’re comfortable charging for them.
Those products take time and money to build.
Charging for useful software gives us the resources to keep improving it.
I’d rather build something customers believe is worth paying for than win simply because we’re the cheapest option available.
Compete on product, not price
The same principle applies to competition.
Of course I want GoMarketMe to win.
But I want us to win because we built the better product:
- Because our attribution works.
- Because developers like integrating our SDK.
- Because our support is better.
- Because we help customers find better creators.
- Because we build features that make running an affiliate program easier.
- Because customers generate more revenue using the platform.
Those are the kinds of things I want companies in our category competing on.
If another company builds something genuinely useful and customers are happy to pay for it, that raises the bar.
Then we have to make GoMarketMe better.
That’s healthy competition.
A race to see who can make software cheapest isn’t nearly as interesting.
Mobile app developers make the same pricing mistake
I see the same hesitation when developers set subscription prices for their apps.
Someone spends months or years building something genuinely useful.
Then comes the uncomfortable part:
What should it cost?
“$9.99/month feels expensive.”
“Maybe $4.99 would convert better.”
“There’s another app charging $2.99.”
It’s understandable.
But your cheapest competitor isn’t necessarily the right benchmark for your mobile app pricing strategy.
The more important question is:
How much value does your app create for the person using it?
- Does it save someone hours every month?
- Help them earn money?
- Help them become better at their job?
- Solve a frustrating problem?
- Save them from paying for something more expensive?
- Give them an experience they genuinely enjoy?
If so, the value of your app isn’t determined by whatever number another developer happened to enter into App Store Connect.
Better pricing can help you build a better app
When an app is priced sustainably, the benefits compound.
- You can invest more in development.
- You can improve onboarding.
- You can provide better customer support.
- You can spend more on marketing.
- You can experiment.
- You can hire.
- You can fix things faster.
- You can keep building features your customers want.
And importantly for us at GoMarketMe, you can afford to reward the people who help grow your app.
Pricing is part of your growth strategy
Mobile app pricing isn’t only a monetization decision.
It’s also a growth decision.
Consider affiliate marketing.
Creators have limited time and attention. They have no shortage of products asking for promotion.
The economics need to be interesting enough for them to participate.
If your app generates very little revenue per customer, there’s naturally less room to pay meaningful affiliate commissions while maintaining healthy margins.
A stronger business model gives you more flexibility:
- You can offer creators better commissions.
- You can spend more to acquire customers.
- You can experiment with different partnerships.
- You can reinvest in growth.
- You can tolerate a longer payback period when it makes sense.
In other words:
Your pricing influences how aggressively you can grow.
Pricing, customer acquisition, creator commissions, retention, and product investment aren’t independent decisions.
They’re part of the same economic system.
This isn’t an argument for charging as much as possible
There is obviously another extreme.
You can’t take a mediocre product, double the price, and suddenly make it premium.
Price has to be supported by value.
Customers should look at what you’re charging and still feel like they’re getting the better end of the transaction.
That’s the ideal.
The goal isn’t:
“How much can I possibly extract from this customer?”
It’s:
“What price lets me create great value for the customer while building a healthy business that can keep getting better?”
Great value for the customer.
A sustainable business for the company.
Both matter.
Build something worth paying for
We’re entering an incredible period for software.
AI is reducing the cost of building products and allowing much smaller teams to accomplish much more.
More people can build. More ideas can be tested. More great products should exist because of it.
But I don’t think the conclusion should be that every piece of software eventually needs to cost almost nothing.
I’d rather see developers use those efficiencies to create dramatically better products.
Products people genuinely value.
Products people are happy to pay for.
Products that generate enough revenue to support great teams, great service, and years of continued development.
So, to app developers:
If you’re creating real value, don’t be afraid to charge for it.
And to everyone building products alongside us:
Let’s compete on who can build the better product. 🙂
Not the cheaper one.