How to Grow Without New Customers

Is it really possible to grow your SaaS without acquiring a single new customer – even if you're still experiencing churn?

Yup. 100%.

Sounds wild, but it's exactly what platforms like SendGrid are doing.

Let's break down how they do it – and how you can do the same.

From $0 to $60/Month Without Blinking

When I was launching SaaSCurate, I needed an email platform to send emails.

My two must-haves:

• A generous free plan (I had $0 revenue)
• Support for both marketing and transactional emails

SendGrid hit the mark:

• Free plan for up to 100 contacts and emails/day
• Email marketing + transactional emails
• Trigger-based automations

Perfect. I signed up and got to work.

But soon I crossed the 100-contact limit. To keep sending emails, I had to upgrade to the $15/month plan.

No big deal.

A little later, I needed to boost activation and engagement – so I clicked to build some trigger-based automations.

Boom. A paywall.

"Upgrade to use automations."

Wait… wasn't that included?

Turns out automations were included in the free plan, but not on the $15/month plan.

To get automations now? I had to jump to $60/month.

And I did. Because I was already invested. Moving platforms would be painful.

And so, in just a couple of months, I went from $0 to $15 to $60/month.

And I wasn't even annoyed.
I was actually impressed.

These guys know how to structure their pricing.

Strategy Breakdown: Expansion Revenue

What happened here is called Expansion.

Expansion is the art of increasing revenue from existing customers over time – by aligning pricing with usage, growth, or needs.

SendGrid's pricing is intentionally designed so that as you grow, your bill grows too.

• More contacts? Upgrade.
• Want automations? Upgrade again.

And they're not alone.

Twilio (SendGrid's parent company) is a masterclass in expansion revenue. Their average customer spends 30% more each year – which means:

Even with 10% churn, they could stop acquiring new customers today… and still grow.

That's the kind of SaaS business that compounds forever.

Apply This To Your SaaS

Want to grow without needing a flood of new users?

Here's how to start:

• Map your user journey – Identify natural "upgrade moments" – more usage, advanced needs, bigger teams, etc.
• Start free, scale with them – Your free plan should include key features – but limit usage so upgrades become a natural next step.
• Measure ARPA – Track Average Revenue Per Account to see if customers are expanding – and by how much.
• Think long-term – Don't just chase signups. Structure your pricing to scale with your customers.

You don't need to be Twilio. But you can steal this playbook and bake expansion into your business model from day one.

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