I'd rebrand this as "Tell HN: Dark patterns I don't want you to use on your pricing page"
While they're sneaky and dis-ingenuous, I imagine the slight possibility it impacts your brand is outweighed by the large chance it meaningfully increases your ARR.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like it either, but I also wouldn't tell another entrepreneur not to do it.
I'd rebrand this as "Tell HN: Dark patterns I don't want you to use on your pricing page"
While they're sneaky and dis-ingenuous, I imagine the slight possibility it impacts your brand is outweighed by the large chance it meaningfully increases your ARR.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like it either, but I also wouldn't tell another entrepreneur not to do it.
You wouldn't encourage another entrepreneur to avoid being unethical because it might have an impact on their ROI?
Everything's a grey area and this seems light grey at best. Unethical is a stretch.
In this case I'd recommend they'd push users to annual.
The unethical part is obscuring the annual prices. If they plainly said what the price was, there'd be no ethical issue at all.
Trying to avoid having potential customers realize the actual price is the behavior of scam artists.