When you’re building pricing and packaging for your B2B SaaS company, the first question isn’t “What should we charge?”
It’s “What do our customers actually value?”
That’s where the Feature Matrix comes in.
This simple framework gives you an unbiased way to map how your product creates value—and where it doesn’t. It cuts through internal opinions and helps you design pricing, packaging, and positioning based on reality, not wishful thinking.
The Feature Matrix measures two things:
Usage – How many of your customers actually use a given feature?
Differentiation – How many competitors offer that same feature?
Plot every feature against these two dimensions, and patterns emerge. Some features everyone uses but no one differentiates on. Others are unique but only valuable to a small subset of users.
Each combination tells you something vital about what to build, what to price, and what to ignore.
The Feature Matrix wasn’t theory—it was born out of necessity.
When I led product marketing for Microsoft Office’s SMB segment, we were trying to make sense of thousands of features across multiple editions. We turned to product telemetry—data showing which capabilities people actually used.
That insight reshaped how we priced, packaged, and positioned the product. It helped define which editions of Office customers were willing to pay for and which were noise. The framework that emerged then is the same one we now use at Kalungi and T2D3 to help SaaS teams bring order to complexity.
Most teams visualize the Feature Matrix as four quadrants, but in practice, it’s more granular—a 4x4 grid.
Both usage and uniqueness exist on a spectrum.
High usage, high uniqueness — The sweet spot. These are your hero features. They belong in your core pricing tier and should dominate your messaging.
High usage, low uniqueness — Table stakes. They’re essential for credibility but not differentiation. Keep them visible, but don’t lead with them.
Low usage, high uniqueness — Your R&D and add-on zone. Great for upsells, extensions, and future product planning.
Low usage, low uniqueness — Noise. Retire these features or hide them from your narrative.
The matrix doesn’t just show you what to build next—it shows you what to stop talking about.
Once you’ve built the matrix, you can use it across every dimension of your go-to-market system.
Pricing and Packaging
Move the features in the top-right quadrant into your hero tier.
Let your table stakes anchor your entry-level package.
Keep niche or advanced features as paid add-ons.
Features everyone uses and no one differentiates on belong in your base plan. Features few use but that only you offer should command a premium.
Positioning and Messaging
Lead with the upper-right quadrant—features that are both unique and widely used.
Mention table stakes to pass qualification filters but don’t let them define you.
Use the lower-right quadrant to shape your brand’s point of view—your way of solving problems differently.
Product Planning
Watch how features migrate over time. Competitors copy; differentiation decays.
Continuously fill your right-hand side with new innovation from customer insights.
The lower-right quadrant—the “unique but niche” zone—is your R&D radar. When a small group starts requesting something no competitor offers, that’s where your next differentiator lives.
Go-to-Market Strategy
If your right side is strong, focus on differentiation.
If your left side dominates, focus on disruption—delivering common capabilities faster, simpler, or cheaper.
If your strength is in the lower-right—unique but niche—you’re a market maker, shaping a new category.
The matrix tells you whether to create, lead, or outpace—before you spend a dime.
Demand Generation and Lifecycle Marketing
Use the data to build nurture sequences that expand adoption across quadrants.
If top-tier users consistently activate a certain feature, guide mid-tier users toward it.
In-product education, triggered messages, and behavioral campaigns can help users climb from what they use today to what delivers more value tomorrow.
ARPU Expansion
Align your pricing meters to usage. Charge where customers experience value.
Run elasticity experiments anchored in feature-level behavior, not gut feel.
By pricing around value actually delivered, you move naturally toward value-based pricing and higher ARPU.
Content and UX Simplification
Strip your website and sales materials down to upper-right quadrant stories.
Table-stakes features can live in checklists or comparison charts.
Anything in the lower-left should probably disappear entirely.
The fewer irrelevant features you highlight, the clearer your message and the higher your conversion.
The matrix also clarifies which go-to-market strategy fits your product’s DNA:
• Market Maker: Your edge sits in the lower-right quadrant—features that are unique but used by a niche audience. You’re defining a new category.
• Differentiator: Your strengths are in the upper-right—widely used and highly unique. You win by depth and value.
• Disruptor: Your power lies in the upper-left—common capabilities delivered faster, cheaper, or simpler. You win by access.
Knowing where your features cluster prevents misaligned GTM investments. It tells you whether to create a new market, lead an existing one, or outpace incumbents through efficiency.
You don’t need a full analytics stack to start.
List your top twenty features. Estimate usage and uniqueness. Place them on the grid. You’ll immediately see where to focus your product narrative and pricing strategy.
Then, ship something based on what you learn.
The insight is only valuable for seventy-two hours before it decays into noise.
AI can generate data, variations, and pricing models faster than ever. But it can’t tell you what matters.
The Feature Matrix is how humans create syntropy—order and meaning—from product complexity.
When you master it, your company stops guessing what to say and starts knowing what to charge.
The Feature Matrix eliminates guesswork.
It aligns pricing with value, surfaces true differentiators, and turns complexity into clarity.
Once you know which four or five features people truly care about, everything else—your pricing, roadmap, and messaging—snaps into focus.
That’s how you move from noise to signal.