So you’re thinking of selling a plugin, or you have one already out there, but you’re not sure what you should sell it for.
Answer: it depends.
And you answer: thanks Brian, that’s super helpful.
But seriously, it really does depend on a number of factors.
Competition
Pricing gets a lot easier if there’s already a plugin that’s pretty similar to yours out there. If not, you’re starting from scratch.
You might be able to price lower if it’s just you and there’s a lot less overhead, but be careful about pricing too low (more on that below).
Support
You probably won’t know exactly what kind of support requests you’ll get before you launch. But after a couple months, you’ll know. Getting a support email is an amazing opportunity to learn what’s confusing or could be better about your plugin, and what new features you might want to add.
Over time you can improve your plugin and your documentation so you get less of the same question, or at the very least use something like HelpScout with saved replies so answering that same question only takes a couple seconds.
The lower you price your plugin, the more people you have to support for the same revenue. Just look at how many customers you need to make $10,000:
$100 = 100 customers
$50 = 200 customers
$20 = 500 customers
$9 = 1111 customers
You’ll get sales quicker at $9, but unless you get zero support requests it’ll be hard to get a reasonable amount for your time.
Quality of customers
This goes in hand with support. It’s odd to think about but the lower you price your plugin, the more of a pain your customers will tend to be.
How much money you want to make
This isn’t a trolling point. You really should think about how much you want to make when you price your plugin.
Do you want to grow a team? Then you really can’t afford to sell your plugin for $9. Want to say solo, and still have other income (like a full time job)? Then you have a lot more room (and time) to experiment.
Conclusion
So it does depend. It’s an experiment. If you’re not sure, pick a price and go for it. You can always raise or lower the price down the road as you learn more about your support efforts, your customers, and the effort to maintain and grow your plugin code.
Want to learn more? Check out the recording of the webinar on Pricing and Pricing Model for WordPress Plugins.