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

> Many non-US countries have little/no credit card presence

Was that statement accidental horrible wording or did you actually mean it ?

If the latter, then you must be one of those many Americans that needs to travel more. The rest of the world are not neanderthals who've never heard of credit cards.

Go to Kenya (Africa) and the only reason you might struggle to pay by credit card is if the merchant has decided to prefer payments via the M-PESA money transfer phone app instead which is what most of the locals use. So you could say a number of non-US countries are even ahead of the US !

But of course I hope your wording was accidental, in which case I apologise for the three paragraphs above. ;-)

personally I think it causes the least amount of bad will if you leave the existing plans at $10*X/year for the people that are grandfathered into those contracts. If you increase the price only on new signups you will keep your happy customers... this goes well with an email that says something like "we are raising the yearly fee on the SAAS however the good news is that you're grandfathered into your current pricing for as long as you maintain your subscription"

Is there a community aspect to your site?

    the typical two-months-free-if-you-pay-annual thing 
    you see everywhere

Anecdotal, but --

When I ran a dating/social site back in the ancient mists of time, it was $4/month or $20/year.

So, more like seven-months-free-if-you-pay-annual. I felt it was successful at driving people towards the annual subscription. Since the annual subscription was such an obviously "better" deal.

In my case I was actively trying to encourage the network effect. I wanted long term community members, not monthly ones. After all, when paying for a site like that, you're really paying for access to the community.

Is there a value to having your customers around longer-term? Community aspects? Promotional aspects? ("40,000 active subscribers for $PRODUCT_NAME!") For many businesses perhaps the answer is "no" but it's worth considering perhaps.

Sounds like you are creating value, and customers are confident in doing business with you for a longer period of time.

So good job!

17% off is a very good deal for the consumer when prepaying a year. Always remember the axiom that a sale happens when you sell something the other party wants at a price you both believe is fair.

Whatever you do, be careful not to add or modify plans in a way that would lose existing paying customers. As the other saying goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. An existing customer is worth a lot more than a prospective customer.

There are lots of changes you could make, but you may want to ask your existing customers first as to why they made the choice they made. Ask them how you can improve their existing service. That will go a long way to inform your future decisions.