💼 Pricing Decision — Retire Vendor Pass + All-Access (May 2026)¶

Decision date: 8 May 2026 Decided by: Sush Implemented by: Copilot CLI session 7902c86d Status: ✅ Live Reversible: Yes (full rollback path documented below)

TL;DR¶

Guided's pricing went from three tiers to one. Going forward, the only product on sale is the $9 single-cert pass with 1 year of access. The $59 vendor pass and $149 all-access pass are retired.

Was	Now
$9 single cert · $59 vendor pass · $149 all-access	$9 single cert

Why¶

1. Zero historical sales of the multi-cert tiers¶

Across the entire payments history (verified via Stripe API on 8 May 2026), the count of completed checkout sessions where metadata.productType !== 'cert' was 0.

Every dollar Guided has ever earned came from the $9 single cert. The vendor pass and all-access existed only as a hypothesis — and the data answered the question.

2. The story is cleaner with one number¶

The brand promise is "$9, not $79." That sentence works on YouTube, on the homepage hero, in FAQ answers, in tweet replies. The moment you say "or $59 for a vendor pass, or $149 for everything," the single sharp number gets blurry.

3. No upsell pressure to manage¶

A multi-tier product needs upsell flows: "buy one cert, then prompt them to upgrade to vendor pass". That's a UX surface, an A/B test, an email sequence, and an analytics dashboard we never have to build.

4. Lower cognitive load for the buyer¶

The fastest path from search → study guide → purchase is a single, obvious price. Three tiers means decision fatigue and "I'll come back later" — which is the death of a $9 impulse buy.

5. Operational simplicity¶

One product means:

One Stripe price to maintain
One success URL
One licence-key shape to debug
No "did the vendor pass cover this?" support tickets
No "I bought all-access for $149, can I get a refund and downgrade?" edge cases

The platform is built and run by one person on top of a day job. Every removed surface is bandwidth back.

What changed¶

Stripe (live mode)¶

Object	ID	New state
Price (Vendor Pass, $59)	`price_1TPtIAIXZo4phfVPI5rF0x4T`	`active: false`
Price (All-Access, $149)	`price_1TPtIBIXZo4phfVPvcv01IhT`	`active: false`
Product (Vendor Pass)	`prod_UOgf0LkyhFTAZR`	`active: false`
Product (All-Access)	`prod_UOgf19snROsc4Y`	`active: false`
Price (Single Cert, $9)	`price_1TRNTjIXZo4phfVPCLjvHSGH`	unchanged ✅
Product (Single Cert)	`prod_UOgfX7gOBynDZq`	unchanged ✅

Archived in Stripe is not deleted — both products and prices remain in the dashboard, can be inspected, and can be reactivated with a single API call. Existing licences (none today, but the pattern is safe) keep working forever because licence verification doesn't touch the price object.

Code (commit `e99fb5d` on `main`)¶

File	Change
`functions/guided/api/checkout.ts`	`productType` validation locked to `'cert'`. Vendor and all return `400 Invalid product type — only single cert purchases are supported.`
`functions/lib/utils.ts`	`STRIPE_PRICES` reduced to a single key (`cert`). `vendor` and `all` entries removed.
`src/pages/help/index.astro`	3-card pricing grid replaced with single $9 card.
`src/pages/[vendor]/index.astro`	Three FAQ entries rewritten to drop $59/$149 references. The "How does the {vendor} vendor pass work?" FAQ removed entirely.
`src/pages/[slug]/index.astro`	"How does purchasing work?" FAQ rewritten to remove the optional `$59 / $149` upsell sentence.
`.github/copilot-instructions.md`	SLA banner updated from `$9/cert, $59/vendor, $149/all-access` to `$9/cert`. Footnote points at this doc.

Code that intentionally was NOT changed¶

The following remain unchanged on purpose, as a defensive read-path for any orphan legacy session metadata that ever surfaces (and to make rollback trivial):

File	Why it stays
`functions/guided/api/verify.ts`	Type union `'cert' \\| 'vendor' \\| 'all'` kept. Only reads metadata.
`functions/guided/api/webhook.ts`	Same.
`src/lib/access.ts`	`hasAccess()` still checks vendor + all-access localStorage keys defensively. Cost-free.
`src/components/interactive/PracticeQuiz.tsx`	Already calls checkout with `productType: 'cert'` only. No change needed.
`src/pages/index.astro`	Already on-message ($9 vs $79). No vendor/all references. (Was also being touched by another session at the time of this change — left alone to avoid conflict.)

Documentation¶

Doc	Change
`pricing-strategy.md`	Overhauled to single-tier model. Retired tiers logged in a historical-record table.
`stripe-payments.md`	Vendor and all-access sections marked DEPRECATED with date and pointer to this doc. Active price table reduced to one row.
`cc-dashboard.md`	"Stripe products" line updated to reflect single product.

SLA verification¶

The change touches functions/guided/api/checkout.ts and the .github/copilot-instructions.md SLA banner — both inside the SLA scope. The protocol was followed.

Step	Result
Pre-change smoke test (3 curls)	✅ All pass
`npm run build`	✅ 2,284 pages, 92s, no errors
`node test-guided-qa.cjs`	21/26 pass; the 5 failures were confirmed pre-existing (verified by stashing my changes and re-running — same 5 failures on baseline). Both critical checkout assertions PASS.
`git push` (explicit paths only — left another session's `index.astro` and `planets.json` alone)	✅ Cloudflare Pages auto-deployed
Post-deploy smoke test (3 curls)	✅ All pass
Post-deploy negative test (`productType: 'vendor'` + `'all'`)	✅ Both rejected with `Invalid product type — only single cert purchases are supported`
Stripe archive (4 API calls)	✅ All 4 objects `active: false`
Final live product list	✅ Only `Guided — Single Cert Pass` remains active

Rollback path¶

If this decision is ever reversed:

1. Restore Stripe products + prices¶

KEY=$(cat ~/.copilot/secrets/stripe-live-secret-key)
curl -s -u "$KEY:" -X POST https://api.stripe.com/v1/prices/price_1TPtIAIXZo4phfVPI5rF0x4T -d active=true
curl -s -u "$KEY:" -X POST https://api.stripe.com/v1/prices/price_1TPtIBIXZo4phfVPvcv01IhT -d active=true
curl -s -u "$KEY:" -X POST https://api.stripe.com/v1/products/prod_UOgf0LkyhFTAZR -d active=true
curl -s -u "$KEY:" -X POST https://api.stripe.com/v1/products/prod_UOgf19snROsc4Y -d active=true

2. Revert code¶

cd C:\ssClawy\guided
git revert e99fb5d
git push

That single revert restores all six file changes (checkout.ts validation, STRIPE_PRICES map, help page, vendor FAQ, slug FAQ, and the SLA banner). The defensive verify/webhook/access code never changed, so revived vendor/all flows just work.

3. Re-publish docs¶

cd C:\ssClawy\learning-docs
git revert <doc-update-sha>

Total time to fully restore the three-tier model: under 5 minutes.

What we're watching for¶

If we see any of these signals in the next 6 months, we revisit:

Repeat purchases from the same email. If learners are buying 3+ certs each, the bundle math gets compelling and a vendor pass returns as an explicit option.
Bulk / team enquiries. A separate "teams" SKU at a different price point (not $9 × N) would be cleaner than reviving the all-access pass.
Stripe data points showing customers stalling at price comparison. Watch the cs_live_* abandonment rate.

If none of those happen, the simpler model wins on its own.

Voice note¶

This decision is on-brand. Sush's brand says "for people like us" — meaning: the cert prep buyer who's tired of being upsold, asked for an email at every step, and locked into vendor portals. Three tiers contradicted that. One $9 number doesn't.