Price raises are never fun or easy to handle, neither by customers nor by business owners.
Take inflation as an example.
According to an article done by Harvard Business Review in 2024, in times of inflation and economic uncertainty, customer expectations of brands increase.
The article lists new research by Catalyst, which states that there has been an 8% rise in consumers even blaming corporate greed for the state of inflation, since 2022.
To prevent this, businesses should show genuine vulnerability and acknowledge the inflation and price raises to even think about building customer loyalty. In turn, brands that fail to be transparent lose trust.
Lost customer trust or poor customer loyalty and satisfaction is nothing you’d want to strike for.
Solution? NEVER raise your prices.
Just kidding—you can start with a fixed pricing strategy instead. 😉
Fixed Pricing—What Is It Actually?
The fixed pricing model is a pricing strategy where you offer products or services at a set, clearly-defined price that does not fluctuate based on any external factors, such as demand.
Establishing a consistent price, you’re offering transparency and predictability for your customers, which are the two most-prominent advantages of the fixed pricing strategy. Unlike dynamic pricing, where prices shift based on market conditions, fixed pricing provides a straightforward, easy-to-understand structure.
Customers can feel safe using your services or purchasing your products, knowing exactly how much they’ll pay.
Does Fixed Pricing Mean You’ll Never Raise Your Prices?
Not necessarily. Fixed pricing means that the price is set at a specific amount for a given period or for a particular product/service, but it doesn’t guarantee that prices won’t rise in the future.
It could be that the price stays the same for the duration of a contract, a promotional period, or until a review happens, after which it could increase depending on factors like inflation, rising costs, or other business decisions. So, it locks in the price for a time, but it doesn’t rule out future price changes.
Which is why you should always compliment a fixed pricing strategy with transparency and vulnerability we mentioned at the beginning of this article—that way, you’ll get the best results.
6 Examples of Fixed Pricing Models
Now, if you think that a fixed pricing strategy sounds good, let’s take a look at how exactly can you implement it.
Because there are several models you can go for:
1. Flat-Rate Pricing
Flat-rate pricing is basically offering a single, unchanging price for a product or service, regardless of customer usage or additional features included in it.
Example: An all-you-can-eat buffet is a great example of flat-rate pricing. You pay a flat fee no matter how little or how much food you actually eat.
2. Tiered Pricing
With tiered pricing, customers can choose between different pricing levels based on the features or quantity of a product or service they need.
Example: A designer offers their services in a productized manner, creating three-leveled packages, each different in terms of the number of assets you get, the number of revisions included, and access to actual consultation meetings. Prices go up based on the tiered packages, but stay flat within each plan.
3. Cost-Plus Pricing
Another option is cost-plus pricing, in which the price is determined by adding a fixed margin to the production cost, ensuring profitability.
Example: A manufacturer selling a product at a 20% markup over production costs, giving them a fixed amount they can count on, and therefore, a desired profit margin.
4. Subscription-Based Pricing
Everything’s a subscription now, right? All this commotion may be part of a fixed pricing strategy, where customers pay a recurring fee (monthly or annually) for continued access to a product or service.
Example: A streaming service offering a library of movies and TV series you can watch for a flat fee paid on a monthly basis. Think Netflix or Amazon Prime.
5. Fixed Fee-for-Service Pricing
Another model you can go for is when a fixed price is charged specifically for the services you offer, regardless of the time or resources required.
Example: a consulting firm charging a flat $5,000 for drafting a business strategy session, no matter how much time it takes to do it for each client.
6. Bundled Pricing
With bundled pricing, multiple products or services are sold together at a fixed price, often at a discount compared to purchasing separately.
Example: a telecom provider offering internet, phone, and TV in a single package.
To further visualize fixed pricing, you can also take a look at some more niche examples, which are government-regulated prices and fixed interest rates loans.
Governments sometimes impose fixed prices or price ceilings/floors on essential goods and services to protect consumers and maintain economic stability. Take water or electricity prices as an example.
With fixed interest rates when you take out a loan, interest rates remain constant for the duration of a loan or investment period, providing predictability for borrowers and investors—aka, falling exactly within the fixed pricing strategy.
💡 There are even more fixed pricing models you can go for, like value-based pricing or fixed hourly rate pricing.
5 Advantages of Fixed Pricing
We’ve already mentioned two of the most prominent benefits a fixed pricing strategy brings, especially for customers.
But let’s highlight all the main benefits fixed pricing offers:
- Predictability & simplicity: both customers and businesses benefit from clear, stable pricing safe from unexpected fluctuations. Customers enjoy a stable cost they can count into their budget, while businesses can better account for their profit, budgeting, expansion planning, or possible losses.
- Customer trust & transparency: fixed pricing makes customers feel secure knowing they will always pay the same amount. It all simply reduces uncertainty and increases brand trust.
- Operational efficiency: for businesses, fixed pricing makes all operations easier to handle, from marketing to billing. If you’re not constantly adjusting prices based on external factors, your marketing team will know the exact value you offer and be more confident in their work advertising your product or service, while the accounting team will have easier time doing all the calculations.
- Competitive differentiation: a well-established fixed pricing strategy can distinguish your business from competitors, especially if you share the trust and transparency values stable pricing brings.
- Ease of budgeting: lastly, with fixed pricing, businesses can plan their expenses more confidently.
3 Possible Cons of Fixed Pricing
Fixed pricing, although bringing in many benefits for both businesses and customers, also comes with its challenges. As everything in this world does.
And the most common challenges or possible cons implementing a fixed pricing strategy brings are:
- Managing changing production costs: maintaining competitive pricing with constant fees you’re charging can be especially hard if the production costs go higher. Whatever the production costs mean to you.
- Projects with high levels of uncertainty: if scope, effort, or client needs shift significantly, a fixed price may lead to undercharging or disputes.
- Long-term contracts + inflation combo: locked-in prices can erode profit margins over time as inflation and rising costs outpace initial pricing, making variable pricing strategies more effective.
With fixed interest rates when you take out a loan, interest rates remain constant for the duration of a loan or investment period, providing predictability for borrowers and investors—aka, falling exactly within the fixed pricing strategy.
💡 A good example of where flat pricing is not the best idea are luxury or exclusive goods. There, high-end brands often use variable pricing strategies to align with perceived value and market demand. The maximum price remains high to reflect the luxury feel of the product or brand.
Fixed Pricing vs. Dynamic Pricing—Key Differences
To really seal the deal with fixed pricing before diving into real-life examples and tips on how you can recreate their success, we want to give more attention to a contrary pricing strategy—dynamic pricing.
Fixed vs dynamic pricing is pretty self-explanatory when put directly next to each other. Dynamic pricing is a pricing strategy where the price of a product or service fluctuates based on market trends or peak demand, competition, customer behavior, or other external factors.
Businesses using dynamic pricing strategies adjust their prices in real-time or periodically to maximize revenue, stay competitive, and respond to supply and demand changes. This strategy is commonly used in industries like airlines, hospitality, and e-commerce.
Now, what are the key differences between fixed and dynamic pricing models you may wonder? Well, take a look at the comparison table below to answer that question:
| Feature | Fixed Pricing | Dynamic Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Constant and predictable | Fluctuates based on demand, competition, or seasonality |
| Customer perception | Transparent and easy to understand | Can be perceived as unfair if not well-explained |
| Business model suitability | Best for products with stable demand | Ideal for industries with fluctuating demand (e.g., airlines, hotels) |
| Revenue flexibility | Fixed revenue streams | Potential for maximizing profits in peak times |
| Implementation | Simple and straightforward | May require data analysis and AI-driven adjustments |
To grab the essence of dynamic pricing, think about the stress (or of some excitement) you feel hunting the best prices for an upcoming flight you have. You’re refreshing the airline website or online ticket comparisons, heck, you even have a Google alert added to your email account to be immediately notified of any price changes. Yep, this kind of pricing is like a game engaging users more and more, but some users may finally get tired or frustrated and click “quit”, don’t they?
That said, dynamic pricing requires a lot more work (and patience…) for the end customer…
Additionally, it works actively against any peaceful budgeting, planning, and successfully removes any feelings of certainty from the buying process.
3 Use Cases Of Fixed Pricing
1. Netflix (Streaming Service)
Netflix, a streaming service that certainly doesn’t need any major explanations—offers users access to the platform based on a monthly subscription. You can choose between three-tiered plans, depending on the movie quality you prefer or whether or not you enjoy ads with your content.
Therefore, our first practical example of a fixed pricing model is a subscription-based one—offering products or services in exchange for a flat monthly or annual fee.
Key lesson: don’t introduce too many inconveniences at once
Just a few years ago, Netflix was a no-brainer for most users. Access to a rich library of movie and TV series choices, low prices, and the possibility to share accounts made customers stick with Netflix, often not even batting an eye for the competition.
But, lately, Netflix had to take a few business-important decisions, including price raises, banning account sharing, and adding ads to lower-tiered plans. As a result, the company received quite a bit of backlash.
Our advice?
When doing fixed pricing strategy and offering your services on a subscription-basis, obviously you’re going to have to raise your prices at some point (hello inflation, we see you), but make sure to do it in a sensitive manner.
Pick. Your. Struggle. Don’t introduce too many inconvenient changes for the end customer at once, to avoid Netflix’s fate.
Do it with Zendo: subscriptions
From a practical POV, how can you actually create a subscription-based business, though? Well there is a multitude of approaches you can go for, but surely the easiest one remains using a tool that helps you handle most to even everything you need to set up and run a subscription business.
With Zendo, you can easily handle all things subscriptions, from setting up the actual subscription plans customers will have no trouble choosing between to payments and even chats with customers to help resolve any of their queries.
But one feature we want to highlight with this case is the core of this whole thing: subscriptions themselves.
In a few simple clicks, you’ll easily set up your whole subscription offer, from drafting the plans, setting the prices, adding free trials, setting up discounts, deciding on billing cycles, highlighting the best value package, and even adding niche things—like enabling customers to pause and reactivate the subscription.
The best part is the fact that creating a subscription service in Zendo, you don’t have to manually count the subscription days, even if a customer pauses their access to your products or services. Everything important will happen automatically.
2. Designjoy (Design | Creative Service)
Designjoy is an amazing real-life example of a creative service sold as a productized item. This agency, created by Brett Williams, offers its customers something called an unlimited subscription.
With a design subscription, instead of getting access to a library of movies or TV series, customers get access to design services offered by Designjoy owner. You basically send in your design requests, and Brett takes care of them, one by one.
Key lesson: limit what you can
To properly visualize the next key lesson, you’re going to have to imagine it’s Christmas all over again. Or two weeks before Christmas.
You’re frantically ordering presents because you forgot to do it earlier. Luckily, Amazon promised you a 3-day delivery. You happily spend your money and wait 3 days for the delivery to happen.
But it doesn’t.
It’s okay, you think. You still have 11 days till Christmas, right?😥 WRONG. The package arrives 12 days later and your Christmas is ruined.
We may be over-exaggerating over here, but you get the deal. Just like with package deliveries, overpromising and under-delivering will be your worst enemy when offering productized services, especially so if you go for unlimited subscriptions.
Which are not actually unlimited. The queue of requests is unlimited, your work however should not be.
Limit what you can and deliver just how much you need to provide your customers with high-quality work only.
💡 For example, Brett currently informs customers on his website that the slots for purchasing a subscription from him are now limited, due to high demand.
3. SaaS Tool (SaaS)
SaaS—Subscription as a Service tools, like Trello or Slack are the new norm and they also work in alliance with the fixed pricing model.
Key lesson: if you offer a free plan, make it usable
Slack, a tool for exchanging messages, files, updates, and most-importantly adding custom cat emojis, most often used by business teams, offers its services on a subscription basis, just like many other businesses we’ve already mentioned.
But Slack also offers a completely free plan for its users, which is actually quite common practice with those working in a subscription-based model.
What’s also common is a mistake companies make when offering a free plan—making it practically unusable long-term.
Now, obviously the main purpose of offering a free plan in the first place is inviting new users to try out your SaaS tool at a low threshold—there’s no payment just yet. But it should be enticing enough to make users want to switch to a paid plan instead, to gain even more from your product, not to get completely nothing.
This Reddit user explained their struggles with Slack’s free plan, and gained 40 upvotes from other Redditors—confirming exactly what we said above.
💡 You can offer a free plan when creating your services in Zendo, too!
Do it with Zendo: client portal & messages
Speaking of user issues, creating a SaaS tool is not about being perfect and never making any bad decision for the product or the end user—it’s about how you react to that challenge and how you treat each customer.
Offering great support and answering to client queries quickly remains one of the top customer support tools.
You already know that Zendo allows you to create different types of services, have customers order and pay for them, set up intake forms and collect requests.
What you don’t know is that you can also build a whole customer support area, chat with your customers, and extend the self-service from just purchasing services to having a whole customer-friendly area, aka a client portal.
Let’s start with the latter.
Building a client portal in Zendo, you’re basically creating a password-protected, self-service space for your customers so that they can log in and:
- order and pay for new services,
- submit new requests,
- fill out intake forms,
- chat with you,
- access files and any other assets or pages you share with them.
The best part? You can customize the client portal individually for each client, and for example, share project results for the whole customer team and other stakeholders at once, or include a specific onboarding documentation for a selected group of clients.
And as for the chat, it’s as simple as you think. Customers can reach out with any queries or project-relation information and additional files whenever needed. What’s cool about Zendo’s chat is the fact that we can add invisible-to-the-client notes that are internal for our team. That way, we can let our team know of any important stuff going on, right within the conversation itself.
Unexpected Like Uber On a Weekend Night Or Stable As a Subscription?
Picking the right pricing strategy can make or break a business, especially when market changes keep everyone on their toes. Should you go for fixed or dynamic pricing?
A fixed pricing strategy keeps things simple—customers know what to expect, and businesses get predictable revenue—but it’s not always the best fit.
On the other hand, dynamic or demand pricing lets businesses adjust to market prices and shifting demand, but it can feel unpredictable (like when Uber prices suddenly surge just when you need a ride home at 4am on a Saturday).
In the end, the best approach depends on your industry, your customers, and how much flexibility you need to stay ahead.
No matter what’s your specific case, we hope this article helped you clear the clouds. 😉
