“Sometimes you do a discount — you bring a lot of revenue but then those users are not going to renew. Or sometimes you do a price increase — you bring more revenue because your conversion goes down but not as much, but then you have a smaller pool to upgrade.”

Discounted cohorts renew less — price-increase cohorts leave you fewer users to upgrade later

Every pricing intervention creates a downstream trade-off that only becomes visible months later. Discounting accelerates short-term revenue but damages renewal cohort quality. Raising prices improves ARPU but shrinks the base eligible for future upgrades. The only way to make an informed call is to model the full cohort lifecycle before deciding which trade-off is acceptable.