Lose It! · B2C · weight loss app
Retest higher prices you once rejected; double the yearly price if it breaks even
Test broke even for the first time; rollout matched tests and gives room for paid ads
Workedpricingexperimentation
What they did
Held $39.99/year from 2012 while testing constantly up and down the demand curve ($5 to $120/year); no price beat $40 consistently. In late 2024, with phones and competitors getting pricier, retested a higher price: net revenue broke even for the first time. Re-ran on iOS and Android and on new, existing and reactivated user cohorts with similar results, then rolled out ~$80/year (competitors' level) to new users in 2026. Rationale: rising CACs (incl. Meta restricting health and wellness ads) and AI feature costs; at $40 it is much harder to hit the ROAS needed to ramp paid acquisition.
What happened
Net break-even in tests with fewer new premium users; retention very stable; first month of full rollout (January) matched experiment results; marketing gets more room for paid UA.
- Stage
- Scale (mature (17+ years in App Store))
- Effort
- Years of price tests; late-2024 retest replicated across platforms and cohorts before 2026 rollout
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · The Hidden Cost of Underpricing Your Subscription – Patrick Rills, Lose It!“However, in late 2024, we started price testing again as, you know, phones are getting more expensive, our competitors are getting a lot more expensive.”
“And so we tested it again on iOS and on Android, on different cohorts of users, new users, existing users, reactivated users. We kept getting similar results.”
“so far, it has held up to our experiment results.”
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More from this episode
- Lose It!: Build in-app sales timed to each user's journey, with deeper discounts off a higher priceHigher base allows 25-75% discounts to more users; no conversion numbers
- Lose It!: Raise the price only for new users; keep current subscribers on their old priceAvoided an untestable churn risk; no numbers on the effect
- Lose It!: Keep the free version good enough to reach the goal without payingRetention very stable after doubling the price, per guest
- Lose It!: Add ads to the free app, one-off purchases, and affiliate partner deals