Ask HN: My startup has more annual subscribers than monthly. What to make of it?

I very recently realized that my product has more annual subscriptions than monthly ones. This was very surprising because it goes against everything I've read online. I offer only one tier that gives you access to all features; it costs $X/month or $10*X/year (the typical two-months-free-if-you-pay-annual thing you see everywhere). The split in subscribers between the monthly and annual plans is 44% and 56% respectively and I don't know how to interpret this information.

Does this mean I should simply increase prices? Is it fair to interpret this as the majority of the market saying "I'm happy to pay the highest tier your product offers"? I'm know that HN always suggests increasing prices all the time, but I'm wondering if my situation is an even stronger signal to increase prices.

Does this mean I should offer more than one tier and segment the market with different features for different prices?

My product isn't very niche or anything like that. It's a typical internet/web SaaS, so I believe most advice should be generally applicable.

Two things:

1. you could keep you customers happy by changing nothing.

2. if you have a money-back policy on your annual plan (eg: pay in january, cancel in june, get ~50% back on what you paid) that effectively means that you're giving a discount for an only apparently sure earning. I'd give a look into that.

Not sure from a business perspective, but from a user perspective, I sign up for the annual plan when I feel confident I'm not going to stop using the service any time in the foreseeable future. So I'd take that as a good thing!

Are your customers individuals, small businesses, large businesses?

Is there a usage component you might add? Gb stored, social posts per month, etc

Have you reduced the risk for your users to choose annual, eg by emphasizing "cancel anytime"?

Seems like your users expect to use your product for a long time, that's great.

I generally purchase annual for thing where I feel like the product is going to have the same utility for me the entire subscription period.

Fastmail, which I’ve used for years, I’m willing to pay two or three years up front.

The new thing I found last week I pay monthly was a disposable card.

Maybe your customers believe your product is useful and they’re not concerned about it failing to work in 6 months and maybe it’s mostly used by businesses which typically think in terms of yearly rather than monthly when it comes to ongoing expenses.