Parseur charges $9 for a $129 plan. On purpose.

Jorge · Margin Moves · a two-minute read

Parseur charges some customers $9 a month for a plan that costs a new customer $129.

On purpose.

And it isn't a secret. Parseur wrote a blog post about it.

Quick background: Parseur is a document-parsing tool, bootstrapped since 2016.

It stopped selling its 1,000-credit plan long ago. The customers still on it pay $9.

No migration deadline. No end date on the rate.

They get the new features. If they ever move to a current plan, it's their call, often with vouchers or credits to help.

Parseur calls the gap a 93% discount it chooses to honour.

Why? Co-founder Sylvain Josserand puts it down to gratitude to early customers.

Now the part I like best.

In the same post, Parseur publishes the math against its own policy. Break-even churn on a price increase is the increase divided by one plus the increase:

raise prices 25% and you can lose 20% of those customers before you're worse off.

The post even says grandfathering forever is rarely the financially optimal choice.

To me, the textbook answer is simple: kill the old plan, move everyone up, take the money.

Parseur did the math. And kept charging $9.

It's the least sentimental act of sentiment I've seen in SaaS.

Here's what the textbook misses.

My read: a legacy price nobody has looked at is a leak. A legacy price you've counted is a decision.

Parseur counted it. And chose to pay.

What the post doesn't say: how big that cohort is, or what it costs to serve.

My guess: the promise stays cheap while the cohort is small and cheap to run.

I'd guess it gets expensive once legacy plans are a real slice of revenue, or each account racks up AI or data costs.

Your move this week: count the customers paying less than your current price. Add up the gap per month.

You don't have to fix it.

But you should know what your generosity costs.

Which leaves the real question: how do you get those customers onto your current price without forcing anyone off?

Paid members get one company's answer when they join. It's one of the three cases in the Starter Guide.

Enrollment isn't open yet. Join the waitlist and you'll get an email the day enrollment opens and the day before it closes.

Jorge