A pricing-led product strategy hits a billing bottleneck

Applebee’s Date Night Pass—a $200 subscription covering a year of date-night meals—sold out in under a minute this year, forcing the chain to issue another 1,000 passes. It’s a telling example of a broader shift: rather than building a product and fitting a pricing model around it afterward, businesses are starting with pricing as the creative foundation for the offering itself.

That trend, however, is colliding with a practical constraint. A survey of more than 2,000 subscription business leaders worldwide suggests that many want to experiment with pricing models but are being held back by their own billing systems.

Why pricing experimentation is on the rise

New pricing models are increasingly seen as a defense against churn. More than half of the subscription leaders surveyed said subscription fatigue is a real problem, and they’re responding by planning to launch new pricing models within the next year (69%). The logic is simple: if customers are quicker to cancel recurring payments, aligning charges more closely with value delivered should reduce cancellations.

Intercom’s AI chatbot Fin is one example. The customer-service SaaS company charges customers only when Fin successfully resolves a support ticket—a resolution-based model that ties payment directly to outcomes, rather than to flat access.

Usage-based models are gaining ground

Usage-based pricing is one of the most popular approaches among the surveyed businesses. Long a staple for infrastructure companies like AWS, Snowflake, Datadog, and Stripe itself, the model is now showing up across more industries. The survey found more companies offering usage-based plans in 2024 than in 2023, with nearly 73% planning to expand such offerings by Q1 2025.

The practical applications are becoming more inventive:

  • A cloud company charging for à la carte computing hours
  • A digital security firm charging per bug caught
  • A sales platform charging per email sent

According to Bill Bedsworth, Stripe’s head of pricing, the appeal is obvious: “Pay-as-you-go aligns the price directly to usage, with no up-front commitment for the user. This is excellent for price-sensitive users where you want a low barrier to entry in order to get them to try your product.”

Legacy billing systems can’t keep up

The gap between ambition and infrastructure is stark. Businesses say their current billing platforms simply can’t handle the pricing models customers want—and the cost is tangible. Nearly 40% of survey respondents said they have lost deals as a direct result of billing limitations.

The problem is systemic. Supporting multiple subscription plans, collecting payments across countries, and handling proration for early cancellations turns a pricing decision into an engineering and operations challenge that touches product, business model, and core processes. What might look like a simple pricing switch becomes a redesign of how the business gets paid.

That helps explain why 55% of respondents said they are likely to replace their billing systems entirely in the next 12 months. When evaluating replacements, they’re prioritizing infrastructure that can support flexible pricing models, reduce involuntary churn, and handle global expansion. For many, the question is no longer whether to switch, but what criteria to apply when choosing the next system.