Most SaaS founders set their prices the same way: glance at a competitor’s page, pick something that looks reasonable, and move on. The number sits there for years, untouched. Nobody really knows if it’s right. That’s not a niche problem; it’s almost universal among early-stage builders.
Kinetic Pricing is a self-serve pricing research tool built around four established survey methods: Van Westendorp, Gabor-Granger, MaxDiff, and Conjoint Analysis. Each one has been used by consultancies for decades. What Kinetic does is make them accessible without a five-figure consulting contract or a research background. You bring your own users, send a single link, and get a result you can actually act on.
The product launched recently on Product Hunt, and it’s the kind of thing that’s hard to oversell without sounding like marketing copy. So let’s just walk through what it actually does.
The Four Research Methods Inside Kinetic Pricing
Each study type answers a specific pricing question. Kinetic doesn’t try to be a catch-all survey builder; it stays focused on willingness-to-pay research, and that focus shows in how the studies are structured.
Van Westendorp: Finding Your Acceptable Price Range
The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter dates back to 1976. It uses four questions to map where a price starts to feel too cheap, acceptable, getting expensive, and way too expensive. The intersecting curves from those responses identify an acceptable price range for your market. Kinetic runs this study for $149 as a one-time purchase. The output isn’t a slide deck; it’s a calculated range with a clear optimal price point.
Gabor-Granger: Testing Exact Price Points
Where Van Westendorp gives you a range, Gabor-Granger tests specific numbers. You pick the price points you’re weighing, and the study measures how stated purchase intent changes across each one. The result is a demand curve you can use to identify where revenue peaks before intent drops off. This study runs for $199 as a one-time purchase.
MaxDiff: Ranking What Buyers Actually Value
Before you can price a bundle, it helps to know which features buyers care about. MaxDiff (Maximum Difference Scaling) forces respondents to choose the most and least important items from a rotating set of options. The output is a ranked list by relative importance, not self-reported ratings that cluster toward the top. One-time price is $279.
Conjoint Analysis: Pricing the Full Package
Conjoint is the heaviest method here. It shows buyers a series of product configurations where features and price vary simultaneously, then models how they trade off one against the other. The result tells you how much buyers are willing to give up in price for a specific feature combination. At $499 as a one-time study, it’s the most complex option. Inside Kinetic Pro, all four methods are included under the subscription.
A Real Scenario: Sarah at 9pm With a Pricing Problem
Sarah runs a B2B project management tool with around 180 paying customers at $49 per month. She’s been sitting on a potential price increase to $79 for six months. She suspects she’s undercharging but has nothing concrete to back it up, and the fear of churn keeps her from moving.
At 9pm on a Tuesday, she opens Kinetic and sets up a Van Westendorp study. She writes a short product description, defines her target segment, and Kinetic generates a mobile-optimized survey link. She sends it to her mailing list the next morning. By the following week, she has 140 responses.
The study comes back with an acceptable price range of $52 to $81. The optimal price point sits at $74. She’s been charging $49. That’s not just underpriced; it’s sitting below the lower bound of what her own users consider normal.
She opens the Kinetic revenue modeler, plugs in her current MRR, sets the proposed price at $79, and models expected retention scenarios. The break-even retention comes out at 62%. She’s keeping 94% of customers after similar product changes historically. The math clears easily. She raises the price. Six weeks later, churn is within the modeled base case.
How a Kinetic Study Actually Runs
Step 1: Define the context
You describe your product, the segment you’re targeting, and the pricing question you’re trying to answer. Kinetic uses this to configure the survey correctly for the method you’ve chosen.
Step 2: Send the link to your users
Kinetic generates a survey link. You send it to your own audience: email list, in-app notification, wherever your users are. The tool does not recruit participants for you. That’s a deliberate choice; rented respondents don’t buy your product.
Step 3: Watch responses build in real time
Responses feed the calculations as they come in. For Van Westendorp, you can watch the four curves form in real time. The math is deterministic: same inputs always produce the same result.
Step 4: Get a decision, not a report
The output is a clear answer to the question you asked, along with the evidence behind it. Kinetic Pro users can attach that evidence to a logged pricing decision and set a scheduled outcome check to review what actually happened after the change.
Kinetic Pricing Plans and Study Costs
Kinetic Pro runs at $99 per month or $990 per year, and it includes unlimited studies across all four methods, plus the Workspace for revenue scenarios, logged decisions, and outcome checks. The Workspace supports three seats. For teams that only need one answer, one-time study pricing is available without a subscription:
- Van Westendorp: $149
- Gabor-Granger: $199
- MaxDiff: $279
- Conjoint: $499
If you buy a one-time study and upgrade to Pro within 30 days, that purchase is credited toward your first payment.
Who Should Be Looking at This
If you have an existing user base and a pricing decision sitting in the back of your head, Kinetic is worth a serious look. It’s particularly well-suited to SaaS founders who are considering a price increase, a new tier, or a packaging change but don’t have the budget for a formal research engagement. The methods are real. The results are deterministic. And starting from $149, it’s a fraction of what a consultant would charge for the same work.
