Pricing for Developers. Mistake most solo founders make | David Boyne @EventCatalog

saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies.

In episode #15 of season 6, Anna Nadeina talks with David Boyne, founder of EventCatalog, an open-source documentation tool specifically designed for event-driven architectures (EDAs), allowing teams to document, visualize, and discover services, events, schemas, and producers/consumers.

Pricing for Developers: The Mistake Most Solo Founders Make

Pricing a product for developers is rarely as simple as picking a monthly number that feels reasonable.

Many solo founders undercharge because they price from their own perspective. They think like users, not buyers. That usually leads to low prices, weak positioning, and unnecessary pressure to chase volume.

If you are building a technical product, especially an open source, self-hosted, or developer-first tool, this matters even more. The person using the product may care deeply about price, but they often are not the person approving the budget.

This article explains how to think about developer pricing more clearly, when a SaaS model is not the best fit, and which mistakes solo founders should avoid when going from zero to sustainable revenue.

Why pricing for developers feels so hard

Developer products sit in a tricky position between user value and company value.

Developers are often highly price-sensitive in conversation. They may hesitate over a tool that costs a few dozen dollars a month. But the same company may spend thousands on software once procurement, team adoption, and business impact are involved.

This creates a common pricing trap:

• The user says pricing matters a lot
• The founder assumes low price is required
• The actual buyer would have paid much more

For solo founders, that mistake can seriously slow growth. You end up needing more customers, more support, and more sales effort to reach the same revenue.

The biggest pricing mistake solo founders make

The biggest mistake is pricing based on your own sensitivity instead of the buyer’s willingness to pay.

This happens a lot with technical founders because they are close to the user. They understand the workflow, the pain points, and the product details. But that closeness can distort pricing decisions.

If you are a developer, you may personally dislike paying for tools. That does not mean your market should be priced around your own buying habits.

In B2B software, especially developer tooling, there is often a disconnect between:

• The person who uses the product
• The person who requests budget
• The person who signs the purchase

When founders ignore that, they anchor too low.

What this looks like in practice

A founder may think:

• “I would never pay that much for this.”
• “Developers will reject anything expensive.”
• “I need to keep this affordable or nobody will buy.”

But company buyers are not comparing your product to a coffee or a personal subscription. They are comparing it to:

• Internal engineering time
• Operational inefficiency
• Documentation gaps
• Coordination failures
• Other enterprise software budgets

That is a very different pricing context.

How to price a developer product more effectively

A better approach is to separate user psychology from buyer economics.

1. Identify who actually pays

Ask a simple question: Who signs off on this purchase?

It might be:

• An engineering manager
• A platform lead
• An architect
• A procurement team
• A department head

If the buyer is not the end user, your pricing model should reflect business value, not personal affordability.

2. Start simple and test willingness to pay

You do not need a perfect pricing model from day one. You do need a way to learn whether customers will pay.

For many solo founders, the simplest path is often better than the most fashionable one.

That can mean:

• A license key
• A paid self-hosted edition
• An open core model
• A small number of paid features on top of a free product

The goal early on is not pricing elegance. It is proof of value.

3. Raise prices deliberately

If almost everyone says yes immediately, your pricing may be too low.

One practical rule many founders use is to increase pricing until some percentage of prospects push back or drop off. A moderate level of resistance can be a healthy signal that you are moving closer to the real market price.

This does not mean pricing aggressively without reason. It means not assuming your first price is correct.

4. Price around business outcomes, not feature count alone

Technical buyers do care about features, but companies pay for outcomes.

For example, a documentation or architecture tool may help teams:

• Understand what systems exist
• See how services connect
• Reduce breakages caused by poor visibility
• Onboard engineers faster
• Create shared understanding across teams

Those outcomes are worth more than the raw feature list.

Why a self-hosted license model can work better than SaaS

Many solo founders assume they must build a SaaS product to make recurring revenue. That is not always true.

For technical products, especially infrastructure and internal tooling, a self-hosted model can be easier to sell.

Benefits of self-hosted licensing

• Simpler operations: You avoid running customer infrastructure yourself
• Lower compliance burden: You may not handle customer data directly
• Easier procurement conversations: Security and data ownership questions become easier to answer
• Better fit for enterprise preferences: Some customers prefer to control deployment and data access
• Less complexity for a solo founder: No need to support a full hosted platform from day one

If your market values control, privacy, or internal deployment, self-hosting may actually be the more attractive option.

When SaaS is not the obvious answer

SaaS brings clear benefits, but it also adds responsibility:

• Hosting
• Service reliability
• Data handling
• Security reviews
• Support expectations
• Compliance obligations

For a solo founder trying to validate pricing and demand, that overhead can slow everything down.

If a simple license model gets customers paying faster, it may be the better early business model.

How open core changes pricing strategy

Open source products face a specific monetization question: why would anyone pay if part of the product is free?

An open core model answers that by keeping the core accessible while charging for advanced capabilities.

This works best when:

• The free version is genuinely useful
• The paid version solves more serious organizational needs
• The value difference is clear
• The buyer is paying for reliability, scale, convenience, or governance

For solo founders, open core can also build trust. Technical audiences often respond better when they can explore, evaluate, and understand the product before entering a sales process.

Why leading with content works better than leading with the product

Another common mistake in developer marketing is pushing product updates before earning trust.

Developers and technical buyers usually respond better to:

• Useful ideas
• Practical opinions
• Clear explanations
• Honest lessons from building
• Problem-focused content

They respond worse to constant product promotion.

A simple rule is this: talk about the problem space more than the product itself.

That means creating content around:

• How teams solve the underlying problem
• Common mistakes in the space
• Frameworks and workflows
• Tradeoffs in architecture, tooling, or process
• Lessons from pricing, selling, or building

The product can appear naturally as part of that conversation, but it should not dominate it.

A practical content mix for solo founders

A useful balance is:

• 20 to 30 percent product-focused content
• 70 to 80 percent problem-focused or insight-driven content

That helps you build credibility without sounding like every post is a pitch.

How AI helps solo founders move faster without losing quality

AI can dramatically reduce the amount of manual work involved in building and marketing a product. But the strongest use case is not handing everything over blindly.

The most effective pattern is usually:

• Use AI for execution and repetition
• Keep human judgment for strategy and review

Where AI can help

• Drafting code in small chunks
• Updating documentation
• Preparing changelogs
• Publishing website updates
• Creating blog assets and visuals
• Applying SEO formatting
• Improving marketing copy

Where founders still need to stay involved

• Product direction
• Customer conversations
• Roadmap decisions
• Critical review of outputs
• Testing and validation
• Maintaining simplicity

The real leverage comes from designing workflows that let AI handle the repetitive parts while the founder remains the decision-maker.

A good rule for AI-assisted building

Break work into small, reviewable steps.

That reduces errors, makes hallucinations easier to catch, and helps founders stay connected to what is being built. Large one-shot prompts are more likely to produce messy output or features that drift away from the real need.

The overlooked revenue risk: renewals and post-sale follow-up

Many early founders focus heavily on new sales. That makes sense at first. The first few customers are proof that the business works.

But once revenue starts growing, retention becomes a major part of the business.

A common mistake is celebrating the sale and then disappearing until renewal time.

That creates several problems:

• You do not know whether the customer is using the product
• You miss signs of poor adoption
• You lose the chance to support successful rollout
• Renewals become uncertain and stressful

What solo founders should do after the sale

• Track product usage where possible
• Identify active and inactive accounts
• Reach out before renewal dates
• Ask what is working and what is not
• Look for customer success patterns
• Treat retention as part of growth, not a separate task

This is especially important with annual licenses and self-hosted products, where usage can be less visible than in a hosted SaaS environment.

How to stay focused when AI makes everything possible

AI creates a new problem for founders: feature velocity becomes cheap.

When you can add a feature in a day instead of a month, the temptation is to keep shipping. But fast shipping does not automatically create a better product.

In developer tools, too much velocity can create bloat. Simplicity often matters more than sheer feature count.

Ways to avoid AI-driven product bloat

• Keep a clear product north star
• Talk to customers before expanding scope
• Do not build every request just because it is easy
• Prioritize clarity and usability over novelty
• Release with a steady rhythm instead of constant noise

For developer products, simplicity is often a competitive advantage. A tool that solves one painful problem cleanly can outperform a broader product that tries to do everything.

A practical framework for solo founders pricing technical products

If you are still unsure where to start, use this framework.

Step 1: Define the problem in business terms

What costly confusion, delay, risk, or inefficiency does the product remove?

Step 2: Identify the buyer

Who approves this purchase, and what do they care about most?

Step 3: Choose the simplest monetization model that customers will accept

That might be a license, self-hosted plan, or open core upsell rather than a full SaaS product.

Step 4: Test real willingness to pay

Charge enough to learn whether the market values the product. Do not rely on hypothetical feedback alone.

Step 5: Raise pricing carefully over time

If there is no resistance, revisit your assumptions.

Step 6: Build retention into the system early

Track adoption, support rollout, and prepare for renewals before they become urgent.

Step 7: Use content to build trust

Lead with useful ideas and clear thinking. Let the product benefit from that credibility.

Common misconceptions about pricing developer tools

“Developers will not pay”

Sometimes true for individuals. Often false for teams and companies.

“If it is open source, monetization will be impossible”

Not necessarily. Open core can work when the paid value is clear.

“It has to be SaaS to be a real software business”

No. Self-hosted licensing can be a practical and scalable approach, especially for technical markets.

“More features means more value”

Only if those features solve real customer problems without making the product harder to use.

“AI means the founder can step back from understanding the work”

That usually leads to weaker decisions. AI helps most when paired with strong review and critical thinking.

What sustainable growth can look like for a solo founder

Not every founder needs venture-scale growth for the business to be a success.

For many solo bootstrappers, the first meaningful milestone is sustainability: the product supports the founder’s life and can be run full-time.

That changes the entire equation. You no longer need to optimize only for hype, headline metrics, or the standard SaaS playbook. You can optimize for:

• Profitability
• Simplicity
• Customer fit
• Long-term retention
• A business model you can actually operate

That is often a more useful target for solo founders than trying to copy companies with very different resources and expectations.

Key takeaways

• Do not price from your own developer bias. The user is not always the buyer.
• Low pricing is not automatically founder-friendly. It can create more work and slower growth.
• A self-hosted license model can be better than SaaS. Especially when customers want control and you want simplicity.
• Open core can work. Free access builds trust, and paid features can monetize organizational value.
• Lead with content, not product pitches. Trust comes before conversion in developer markets.
• Use AI to remove repetitive work, not replace judgment.
• Do not ignore renewals. Retention matters as much as new sales.
• Resist feature bloat. AI makes building faster, not product decisions easier.

If you are a solo founder building for developers, pricing is not just a number. It is a positioning decision, a business model decision, and often a signal of whether you understand who gets the value and who pays for it.

Get that right, and growth becomes much easier to sustain.