I don't care if companies try to insult me with their pricing (I'll gladly buy the "hobbyist tier" if that's what I need), but please, just publish pricing.
I hate when pricing sheets say "Call us for pricing" - just tell me outright, are you charging $5 a seat or $500 a seat? I'm not going to call or email to find out, I always assume that "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".
The OP is a being a little sensitive. Though are lots of little tricks like this to get people to go up a level. They learnt it from restaurant menus and wine lists.
My pet hate currently is opaque “credits” and value based billing.
I saw an ETL tool earlier which charges on a per column basis. I’m sure that backfired over flat tiered plans.
Another ETL charges per unique primary key synced, ignoring the fact the systems with append-only databases could move the exact same _volume_ of objects as another system, but cost 100 or 1000x more because of an arbitrary uniqueness constraint.
Not to mention they also use a credit system which not only uses different tiers of pricing per credit, but ALSO credits have a sliding scale of value where syncing less rows has a higher marginal cost than syncing more..
You need a constraint solver to figure out pricing, it's madness.
OP preempts this (whether you agree is another matter):
> One might argue I am being overly sensitive – I beg to differ. I suspect this company’s intentions were not pure.
> The product does not make sense for a hobbyist to use (it’s a tool for businesses). More likely, they’re hoping I will tell myself, “I’m not a hobbyist, I’m a real business!” and proceed to select a more expensive plan than I actually need.
What do you think of the de facto pricing of SaaS companies where they list 50$ per month (PAID YEARLY).
Almost every SaaS pricing is doing this.
At obe point few customers would write us and claim that our competitors were cheaper even though they were not.
The yearly plan of the competitor was slightly cheaper than our monthly plan. That forced us also to play that game where we added yearly plans with the pay 50$ per month (PAID YEARLY) just to not look more expensive on a superificial comparison of our customers
I had my service's pricing page say "$5 per year" and lots of people complained that $5 per month is too expensive. So I switched to "$1 per month (paid yearly)" and now get far fewer complaints for more than double the price. I consider it a tax on something.
They also like to put dark UX patterns around this. More than once I’ve had to request a refund after seeing a monthly price and then being billed for the annual price.
It's likely based around driving a sunken cost fallacy where the price is good enough to justify buying outright but the value is just good enough to force you to use it.
It's a fair point, albeit not something I'd really thought of. The main one that annoys me is the bigger, highlighted, more prominent 'most popular' option... which.. usually seems really unlikely to be true? Especially when there's a free option, it just almost certainly isn't. Obviously the free option is never the prominent most popular option.
Meta point: 'don't insult me with your' tiny blog-in-a-sidebar & massive photo-content?
Sounds like the SaaS was able to help you decide their service isn't a good fit for you.
If your usage and budget is on a hobbyist level but you're expecting business level support, you won't be happy with the service and they helpfully ruled their service out of your choices.
I'm sure if you keep looking you'll be able to find something that will give you the warm fuzzies at your desired price.
> Opt for metered billing over tiered pricing when possible
Hmm that does sound like the hobbyist tier. Depending on the tool, I'd go for predictable costs if it's a business expense unless it's part of the money maker plumbing and really needs to scale to unexpected demand...
Metered pricing makes it hard to get approval to buy at many organizations. Simple metering (per user) is doable because the purchase department can pretty easily count heads. Complex metering, where you need someone with a deep understanding of the use the product, someone good at spreadsheet modeling, and somebody in purchasing all to sit down and agree together to buy your product? Ouch. You better be a FAANG-sized cloud provider or something like that, it’s going to be a grind.
Pretty much all retail does this, and the general population generally like it. JCPenney tried going to "everyday low prices" once and it failed miserably. Now, they employ a system of discounts, discounts on discounts, rewards, credits, etc that essentially means you have no idea how much anything in their store will cost you. But, their customer's tend to like it that way.
On the one hand, you have a million "growth hackers" espousing the benefits of optimizing this and that, including pricing, to extract the most value from your customers. On the other hand, some people are going to call you manipulative if you do it. As a customer, I filter through the bs and go with what I need. I also know an organization is likely to have some offputting "player" working, say, marketing, but the tactics employed at that level won't speak for their whole org and/or products. Maybe I'm influenced one way or another, but if I keep paying, you must be offering me enough value or I'll eventually walk away.
Yes, it would be great if pricing and marketing was always honest but I don't expect to see "We do our best, but we're often mediocre, so just go for the cheapest plan" anywhere soon.
Train the bs filter. It'll serve you well in this and many other cases.
If you're selling your software with a subscription price, I will immediately click off your site. I'm not exaggerating that the moment you start trying to edge in on rent collection for marginal utility, my eyes glaze over and I stop caring about your product. You could be selling a magic wand that fixes my life and fulfills my every desire, but I'd have no idea because there's a $2/month subscription cost attached.
The reason why is principle. Build a good product, price it appropriately and people will come. I payed an exorbitant amount for a Bitwig license, but that was because they provided a product that made me happy and was a fair deal. No dark UX practices, no contract or perpetual payment obligation, just a transaction of money and software. I regret it less than my Netflix subscription, honestly.
- some software requires constant maintenance. Subscriptions are the only way to make it possible.
- some software may cost damn lot to create so no feasible single payment exist to even cover the costs of creation (especially on the early stages of sw lifecycle [and/or] when marketing is poor, but the devs still need funds to proceed). Subscriptions are the only way to make the price bearable for the general public. Example: market of games for Android. Google has tought the public that many sw for Android is very cheap or even free - try to stay afloat on that premise without subscriptions.
- etc etc etc
I'm sorry that I have to tell you what to do (and nobody likes to hear such unasked advices) but you really should try to build your own product and make it successful. This is the only way to validate the viability of your "principle".
> Build a good product, price it appropriately and people will come.
Unfortunately, much as I would like that to be the case, that's just not true. People won't come simply because you build it, in fact that's a common refrain heard in the startup world. People, however, will pay for subscriptions if they materially help them. And subscriptions are often the best for developers because software development is not static, there are always bugs to fix and features to add.
This blog post is garbage.
If the red line between you using a tool or not depends on the harmless word to describe a pricing tier, this is not a professionally made decision.
You are, at best, making a hobbyist tier choice.
I'm pretty sure he is talking about aiven.io, I had exactly the same though when checking their pricing. It's looking like a dark pattern to force you to choose a bigger plan
[+] [-] Johnny555|4 years ago|reply
I hate when pricing sheets say "Call us for pricing" - just tell me outright, are you charging $5 a seat or $500 a seat? I'm not going to call or email to find out, I always assume that "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".
[+] [-] bradj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benjaminwootton|4 years ago|reply
My pet hate currently is opaque “credits” and value based billing.
I saw an ETL tool earlier which charges on a per column basis. I’m sure that backfired over flat tiered plans.
[+] [-] CaveTech|4 years ago|reply
Another ETL charges per unique primary key synced, ignoring the fact the systems with append-only databases could move the exact same _volume_ of objects as another system, but cost 100 or 1000x more because of an arbitrary uniqueness constraint.
Not to mention they also use a credit system which not only uses different tiers of pricing per credit, but ALSO credits have a sliding scale of value where syncing less rows has a higher marginal cost than syncing more..
You need a constraint solver to figure out pricing, it's madness.
[+] [-] newsbinator|4 years ago|reply
> One might argue I am being overly sensitive – I beg to differ. I suspect this company’s intentions were not pure.
> The product does not make sense for a hobbyist to use (it’s a tool for businesses). More likely, they’re hoping I will tell myself, “I’m not a hobbyist, I’m a real business!” and proceed to select a more expensive plan than I actually need.
[+] [-] giorgioz|4 years ago|reply
Almost every SaaS pricing is doing this. At obe point few customers would write us and claim that our competitors were cheaper even though they were not. The yearly plan of the competitor was slightly cheaper than our monthly plan. That forced us also to play that game where we added yearly plans with the pay 50$ per month (PAID YEARLY) just to not look more expensive on a superificial comparison of our customers
[+] [-] stavros|4 years ago|reply
https://imgz.org/money/
[+] [-] benjaminwootton|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoldesu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OJFord|4 years ago|reply
Meta point: 'don't insult me with your' tiny blog-in-a-sidebar & massive photo-content?
[+] [-] chias|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjmorrison|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstx1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] satvikpendem|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lloydatkinson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sparrish|4 years ago|reply
If your usage and budget is on a hobbyist level but you're expecting business level support, you won't be happy with the service and they helpfully ruled their service out of your choices.
I'm sure if you keep looking you'll be able to find something that will give you the warm fuzzies at your desired price.
[+] [-] google234123|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nottorp|4 years ago|reply
Hmm that does sound like the hobbyist tier. Depending on the tool, I'd go for predictable costs if it's a business expense unless it's part of the money maker plumbing and really needs to scale to unexpected demand...
[+] [-] kylecordes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] elryry|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paul_milovanov|4 years ago|reply
$1.00 + 30% = 1.00 + 0.30 = $1.30
then
$1.30 - 30% = 1.30 - 0.13*3 = $0.91
PROFIT!
[+] [-] conductr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kube-system|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vbo|4 years ago|reply
Yes, it would be great if pricing and marketing was always honest but I don't expect to see "We do our best, but we're often mediocre, so just go for the cheapest plan" anywhere soon.
Train the bs filter. It'll serve you well in this and many other cases.
[+] [-] smoldesu|4 years ago|reply
The reason why is principle. Build a good product, price it appropriately and people will come. I payed an exorbitant amount for a Bitwig license, but that was because they provided a product that made me happy and was a fair deal. No dark UX practices, no contract or perpetual payment obligation, just a transaction of money and software. I regret it less than my Netflix subscription, honestly.
[+] [-] Arech|4 years ago|reply
- some software requires constant maintenance. Subscriptions are the only way to make it possible.
- some software may cost damn lot to create so no feasible single payment exist to even cover the costs of creation (especially on the early stages of sw lifecycle [and/or] when marketing is poor, but the devs still need funds to proceed). Subscriptions are the only way to make the price bearable for the general public. Example: market of games for Android. Google has tought the public that many sw for Android is very cheap or even free - try to stay afloat on that premise without subscriptions.
- etc etc etc
I'm sorry that I have to tell you what to do (and nobody likes to hear such unasked advices) but you really should try to build your own product and make it successful. This is the only way to validate the viability of your "principle".
[+] [-] satvikpendem|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, much as I would like that to be the case, that's just not true. People won't come simply because you build it, in fact that's a common refrain heard in the startup world. People, however, will pay for subscriptions if they materially help them. And subscriptions are often the best for developers because software development is not static, there are always bugs to fix and features to add.
[+] [-] tptacek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rgharris|4 years ago|reply
- MVP (was Hobby)
- Startup
- Business
- Enterprise
[+] [-] imwillofficial|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js4ever|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cilvic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endofreach|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rand846633|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyberge99|4 years ago|reply
You’re more likely to buy a 10 lb (2 kilo?) bag of Gummy bears for $20 because comparatively it’s cheap!