How to review a competitor pricing change

A competitor changes its pricing page. Your next job is to establish what a customer would pay for the same job today, then decide whether your own offer needs an update. A monthly figure becomes meaningful when you know the billing commitment and the work included.

Use the review below for a software plan, an agency package, or a local service with published prices. It produces a dated decision record that a colleague can check. The worked example is fictional. Shopify and Mailchimp are public examples of pricing terms, checked on October 11, 2026; neither example asserts that the company recently changed its prices.

Choose the customer job you are comparing

Start with one sentence about the buyer. For example: “A two-person design studio needs to manage 20 active client projects and give both staff members access.” Keep that sentence beside your comparison. It tells you which plan limits matter and which additions your buyer would use.

Choose a small set of businesses that a prospect could consider for that job. A freelancer selling a fixed-scope website package might compare other fixed-scope offers with similar page counts and handover terms. A subscription service should record the number of users and the usage level its customers typically need.

• Save the official pricing URL and the plan name. Add a help or terms page when the pricing card links to details.
• Record the country, currency, billing choice and date checked. Use the same settings on the next review.
• Write down the required capacity, such as 20 projects or 2,000 contacts. Include the cost of necessary add-ons.
• Capture the relevant wording in a dated note or screenshot so the next reviewer has a baseline. Follow the site’s access rules and use public pages.

Check billing terms before calling it a price change

Open the current source page and select the billing option used in your baseline. Check whether a displayed monthly equivalent requires a full-year payment. Read the footnote beside an introductory offer and find the recurring rate after it ends. Keep tax treatment and currency visible in your note.

Shopify’s billing overview explains that annual billing charges the year upfront and presents a lower effective monthly rate. Its plans also have card-processing and third-party transaction fees. The public pricing page separates monthly and yearly rates. Those are different purchase terms to record when you compare an ecommerce offer.

For your own review, calculate two amounts: the recurring cost over 12 months and the cash due at the start. A fictional $40 monthly subscription costs $480 across 12 monthly payments. A fictional $30 monthly equivalent billed annually requires $360 upfront. Label each calculation with its commitment. A change in the selected billing option explains a different displayed figure.

Read the allowance behind the headline price

Record the included quantity and the point at which a customer needs another tier. Look for seat limits, service hours, usage allowances, support terms and paid extras. Pick the fields that affect the customer job you wrote down.

Mailchimp’s pricing guide says the marketing plan type and contact tier determine the monthly bill. Its contact count includes subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts; archived, cleaned and deleted contacts are excluded. Exceeding the contact limit during a billing cycle brings an additional charge. This gives a concrete reason to compare the same audience size and contact definition each time.

When a limit changes, describe the practical effect. “The package includes two editing rounds” gives a prospect something to compare. If a business replaces a named feature with a broad phrase, follow its documentation link and confirm what the phrase includes. Leave a field marked “needs confirmation” when the public evidence is incomplete.

Work through one fictional change

Imagine a project-management competitor that moves its Studio plan from $49 to $59 per month on monthly billing. The same update raises the active-project allowance from 20 to 30. The currency remains USD and the plan still includes two users. These invented figures illustrate the review; they describe no BrandMochi customer or named competitor.

The recurring charge rises by $10 a month, or about 20.4%. The allowance rises by 10 active projects. For the two-person studio working on 20 projects, the relevant new annual cost is $120. A studio managing 25 projects needs to examine which earlier plan or add-on would have covered that workload before calculating a comparable difference.

Your own offer decision follows from your costs and customer conversations. If you already serve the 20-project buyer at a sustainable margin, review whether your pricing page explains that allowance clearly. If prospects regularly ask for 25 projects, estimate the cost of serving that workload and consider a separately priced option. A competitor’s new figure supplies context for this calculation.

Write a decision that another person can check

Keep the observation separate from your proposed action. The observation names the source and the changed terms. The action names the page, sales document or offer you will review. Give the task an owner and a review date, even if the decision is to keep the current offer.

Observed in this fictional example: Studio is now USD $59 monthly for two users and 30 active projects; our baseline was $49 for 20 projects. Next action: Jamie will check our onboarding page against the 20-project buyer’s questions by Friday. We will keep our current price while reviewing support costs and recent prospect questions.

Illustrative internal decision note; no customer results are claimed.

For an external comparison, attach the source URL and the date checked, and describe the billing terms beside the amount. Verify every factual sentence against the current official page before publishing. Keep a scheduled reminder to recheck the comparison so your website continues to describe the offer customers can buy.

Use BrandMochi’s competitor profile as the starting record

In BrandMochi, open your brand’s Competitors section. A team member with management access can use “Add a competitor” with the competitor name and a public company or pricing URL. The first profile is queued. Profiles display available plan information and provide “Company site” and “Pricing” links, plus the latest checked time.

The shipped monitor captures configured public pages and uses model-based research to compare changed page content with the previous profile. The first profile establishes a baseline. A later comparison judged to contain a material change creates a competitor action item. Open the source link and apply the same billing and allowance checks described above before making a commercial decision.

A capture or research failure appears as “Needs attention” in the competitor profile. A checked timestamp tells you when the check ran; it does not guarantee that every term on a dynamic website was captured correctly. Login-only offers, region-dependent prices and details revealed through interactive controls can require a manual visit. Confirm the terms for the buyer and market you serve.

You can also carry out this entire review in a shared document. Keep one row per offer with the source URL, date, billing terms, required capacity and decision. BrandMochi collects the profile and change queue; the source page remains the evidence for the price you describe.

Finish with one clear next step

Pick one competitor and one buyer workload this week. Save a baseline from its official pricing and help pages. On the next check, verify any changed term and write down the effect on that workload. Assign one follow-up, or record why you are keeping the current offer. That dated note gives your next pricing conversation a specific starting point.