Slack raised its prices exactly once between its 2014 launch and July 2022, and it still didn't lose the room. Unity Technologies raised its prices once, in September 2023, and lost its CEO within a month. The gap between those two outcomes has almost nothing to do with the size of the increase and everything to do with how each company delivered the news.
The Slack Playbook: Warn, Explain, Grandfather
On July 18, 2022, Slack announced its first pricing change since the product launched in 2014, moving monthly Pro seats from $8 to $8.75 and annual Pro seats from $6.67 to $7.25, effective September 1, 2022. The mechanics of the increase were unremarkable. What mattered was the six week runway and the exit ramp: customers who renewed before the effective date could lock in the old rate for another cycle. Slack didn't ask anyone to absorb a surprise on their next invoice. It gave existing customers a choice and enough time to make it.
The Unity Playbook: Surprise, Retroactive, Reverse
Unity did the opposite. On September 12, 2023, it announced a new Runtime Fee that charged developers per game install once they crossed revenue and install thresholds, and applied it retroactively to games already shipped under the existing terms of service. Developers who had built their unit economics around Unity's published pricing found the rules changed under contracts they had already signed. The backlash was immediate and industry wide, including boycott threats from studios that make their living on Unity's engine.
Unity reversed the policy within ten days, replacing it with a flat 2.5% revenue share. It wasn't enough to undo the damage. CEO John Riccitiello resigned effective immediately on October 9, 2023, three weeks after the announcement.
Same category of decision. Opposite results. The variable was trust, and trust is a function of how much warning you give and whether you honor the terms people already agreed to.
Call It a Price Increase
Harvard Business Review's Utpal Dholakia has one rule that covers most of what goes wrong here.
"Call the action a price increase, not a price adjustment, a price change, or another euphemism."
His research found that euphemistic messaging can cause serious harm, fraying the relationship with loyal customers who read the soft language as an attempt to hide something. Customers can tell the difference between a company that respects them enough to state plainly what is happening and one that is managing them.
Harvard Business Review's Marco Bertini, Julia von Schuckmann and Ann Kronrod go further in their guidance on pricing conversations, warning specifically against tricks that conceal the true cost of an increase. Bundling, phased rollouts that hide the real number, and confusing tier restructuring all fall into that trap. If your existing customers need a spreadsheet to figure out what they are actually paying now, you have already lost the trust you were trying to protect.
Justify the Number Before You Announce It
A Bain and Company survey of more than 1,700 B2B companies, reported in Harvard Business Review, found that list price increases matched or exceeded input cost increases at only 55% of companies. Nearly half were raising prices without a cost story that backed up the number. That gap matters, because customers who ask why now deserve an answer rooted in something real: input costs, product investment, or expanded scope. Notably, 52% of companies planning to raise prices in that survey said they would invest in frontline sales training so their sellers could articulate the value behind the premium. The increase and the justification were treated as one deliverable, not two.
What to Do This Week
If a price increase is on your roadmap, build the announcement like Slack built theirs, not like Unity built theirs.
- Name it a price increase in the subject line. Do not make customers decode a euphemism.
- Give existing customers a defined window to renew at the old rate, the way Slack gave until September 1, 2022.
- Never apply new terms retroactively to commitments already made. That single decision is what turned Unity's announcement into a boycott.
- Before the email goes out, write down the specific cost or value justification your sales and support teams will give when asked why now, and train them on it instead of leaving them to improvise.
The number you choose matters less than whether your customers believe you are being straight with them about it. Slack proved you can raise prices for the first time in eight years and keep your customers. Unity proved you can lose a CEO over how you did it, not what you charged.