A legacy pricing plan is a plan you no longer sell to new customers but still run for existing ones, usually at the price they signed on. The customers on it are grandfathered. Every hotel tech vendor that has changed its pricing has some, and most keep them longer than they meant to, because touching them feels risky.

Leaving them alone is also a decision. Legacy plans mean old prices, special billing rules, features you cannot switch off and a sales team that has to explain why the hotel down the road pays less. This post gives you a reusable framework for deciding when to retire a legacy plan and which exit route to use, with public examples of each.

The Legacy Plan Exit Matrix

The Legacy Plan Exit Matrix sorts every legacy plan by two questions. First, what does the plan cost you to keep: in support, engineering, billing exceptions and sales confusion? Second, how much would you lose if the cohort left: revenue, references and goodwill? The answers point to one of four routes.

The Legacy Plan Exit Matrix sorts every legacy plan by its cost to keep and the value of its cohort, then points to one of four routes. Free to share with a link back to this post.

Route 1: Keep

Some companies decide the trust is worth more than the clean-up. 37signals, which makes Basecamp, publishes a policy called Until the End of the Internet. It says that if a product enters a legacy phase, customers can keep using it indefinitely while their subscription stays active, and that legacy products still get security updates and customer support even if they get no new features.

Use it when: the legacy plan runs on the same platform as everything else, costs little to support and the cohort is a source of referrals. Watch for: keeping becomes expensive the moment the old plan needs its own code path.

Route 2: Freeze

Freezing keeps the old price but stops the plan from growing. Mailchimp introduced a new pricing model on 15 May 2019, and its help page on legacy plans explains that accounts paid before that date are on legacy plans, that adding certain features such as new audiences or seats is limited on the legacy Free plan, and that some upgrades or changes require switching to the new pricing. Customers who stay still are left alone. Customers who want more move across.

Freezing does not have to mean the price never moves, but any later increase should be announced as clearly as the freeze itself. Use it when: the old plan is cheap to run but you want growth to happen on new pricing. Watch for: a frozen plan with a rising price is a sunset without the honesty, and customers notice.

Route 3: Lift

Lifting moves legacy customers onto a current plan that gives them more, at the same price. On 2 April 2024 Zapier announced that existing Starter plan customers would move to the Professional plan at no extra cost, and that its new Enterprise plan would replace the Company plan, with the team contacting Company customers about next steps.

Use it when: the old plan's limits are blocking product work or creating support load, and the cohort is valuable. You remove a plan from your system without a price fight. Any price change can follow at a later renewal, once the customer is using the extra value. Watch for: make sure the new plan does not quietly remove something the old one included.

Route 4: Sunset

Sunsetting ends the plan. It is the right call when the plan sits on a product or platform you are retiring. Atlassian is the clearest public case. Its Server end of support FAQ states that Server app sales ended on 2 February 2021 and that as of 15 February 2024 Server products are no longer supported, with renewals prorated to that date. Customers were offered two routes, Cloud or Data Center, and 60-day free Cloud Migration Trials.

Atlassian's farewell to Server post describes the migration tooling it built, and offers extended Server support for up to 12 months to customers who bought large Cloud subscriptions in the final months. It also reports that customers had more seats on Cloud than on Data Center and Server combined. Use it when: keeping the plan means keeping old infrastructure. Watch for: a sunset without a long runway and migration help is how vendors lose good customers.

Five triggers that say it is time

Most legacy plans should not be touched in the first year after a pricing change. Review them when one or more of these appears:

1. Cost to serve: the plan needs its own code path, billing rule or support process.

2. Roadmap block: you cannot ship a feature or packaging change because of what legacy customers were promised.

3. Price gap: new customers pay far more for the same thing, and existing customers or sales teams start comparing.

4. Cohort shrink: the legacy cohort is now small enough that the revenue at risk is lower than the cost of keeping it.

5. Contract window: renewals for most of the cohort fall within the next 6 to 12 months, so you can change terms at renewal rather than mid-contract.

How to run a retirement in hotel tech

Hotels add two complications. Changes landing in peak season get ignored or resented, and many properties renew on an annual budget that the owner approves. Plan around both.

1. Segment the legacy cohort by revenue, product usage, renewal date and health score before you choose a route.

2. Pick a route per segment, not one route for everyone: lift your best accounts, freeze small ones, sunset only where the platform demands it.

3. Announce outside peak season with at least one full renewal cycle of notice.

4. Lead with what the customer gains, then the date, then the price, in that order.

5. Offer real migration help: data transfer, training and a named contact, as Atlassian did with tooling and trials.

6. Let customer success call the top accounts before the email goes out.

7. Track churn and downgrades in the cohort for two renewal cycles and compare against your forecast.

Retiring a legacy plan is a pricing change, so the principles in raising prices for existing hotel customers apply. Because the change lands at renewal, it also belongs in your renewal playbook, and renewals are decided long before the renewal date. Track the effect on net revenue retention, not just logo churn.

A quick self-check

Pricing models change as a company grows, which is why legacy plans pile up in the first place. The hotel tech GTM strategy guide shows where pricing reviews sit in the wider revenue system. If you want an outside view of which legacy plans are costing you money, start with the free GTM leak audit.

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