1 like = 1 fun fact about SaaS pricing
It's illegal for SaaS vendors to require customers in California to email/call to cancel their plans.
An Intercom customer got this email from them recently:
Asana’s price per user (on the Premium plan) increases as your team grows:
@pipedrive saw that lots of people were googling for Pipedrive promo codes, so they put up a page that currently ranks #1 for that search and offers a promo code to anyone who finds it: pipedrive.com
@pipedrive Microsoft Office is still a paid only product!!!
but if you need to use it for something simple, you can use Office Online for free
but if you need to use it for something simple, you can use Office Online for free
Slack charges a lower price per user for customers in India
Software prices went up 62% on average over the past decade. 3x faster than inflation! capiche.com
Adobe Creative Cloud allows monthly plans, but those monthly plans are still an annual commitment, early termination costs 50% of your remaining time
For a team of 10 users, Jira costs $100/year
For a team of 11 users, it costs $1050/year
For a team of 11 users, it costs $1050/year
@zapier has some of the friendliest refund policies in the entire industry: zapier.com
@zapier BambooHR's self-serve pricing increased 604% from 2009 to 2014, after which they switched to enterprise/custom pricing
@zapier If you pay for Zoom Rooms, you can get 1 (or sometimes more) free Zoom user per room. You just need to ask!
@zapier I'm not out of facts yet, but leaving this here in case I start to run out soon:
@zapier The closer you are to Netflix on this chart, the tighter your customer feedback loop will be (talking about "vote with your wallet" feedback, not NPS scores etc)
@zapier I've looked at thousands of SaaS pricing datapoints and can only find one company that seems to offer zero negotiation on their pricing to anyone under any circumstances: @Superhuman
(however, they don't list this non negotiable number on their site?)
(however, they don't list this non negotiable number on their site?)
@zapier @Superhuman If you bought every edition of Microsoft Office since they very beginning (at retail price), you'd have paid a total of $4,033.
This breaks out to $21.98/user/month (adjusted for inflation)
If you started at Office '96, this number drops to $12.36/user/month
This breaks out to $21.98/user/month (adjusted for inflation)
If you started at Office '96, this number drops to $12.36/user/month
@zapier @Superhuman pretty much every startup should buy @ProductHunt's Founder Club deal for $720. It's an insanely good deal: producthunt.com
Also a very good deal: Spend $5K on Stripe's corporate card and get $1,400 in Stripe processing fees waved (one time only, obviously)
Mixpanel story:
"We have 10 employees. We were paying 2k/year for the middle plan when renewal came up.
We threatened to leave and said they weren't supporting startups, and they told us of a miraculously new startup program which is 90% off whatever the normal MTU price is."
"We have 10 employees. We were paying 2k/year for the middle plan when renewal came up.
We threatened to leave and said they weren't supporting startups, and they told us of a miraculously new startup program which is 90% off whatever the normal MTU price is."
Basecamp's switch to $99/mo unlimited flat rate for everyone was great for many users, but was a 3x price increase for users with less than 10 projects
Both Intercom and Mailchimp charge based on "active" users, which means all the users you have in your DB.
This tool auto archives your users constantly, so that you only pay for the ones that you interact with in a given month.
hibernately.com
This tool auto archives your users constantly, so that you only pay for the ones that you interact with in a given month.
hibernately.com
FullStory story:
"We pay $160/mo billed yearly, on the "startup program." Originally we were on the free tier, but hit the cap at 1,000 sessions per month. Normally their pricing starts at ~$800/mo but if you email their support, they'll set you up with the startup program."
"We pay $160/mo billed yearly, on the "startup program." Originally we were on the free tier, but hit the cap at 1,000 sessions per month. Normally their pricing starts at ~$800/mo but if you email their support, they'll set you up with the startup program."
@baremetrics has a cool thing called Open Startups, where some cool companies are sharing all their revenue publicly: baremetrics.com
Lemonade recently announced they had $100M in ARR and this post completely decimated that claim: learnings.substack.com
you can buy your way onto gartner's magic quadrant
not exactly a fun fact but leaving this here:
twitter's API pricing page url is "/aaa-all" instead of like "/plans" or whatever...and this is how i name files too!!!
i never said some of my fun facts can't be things i previously tweeted!
a brief word from our sponsors:
if you're an engineer or designer and you like price transparency our team is remote and we NEED you. DMs open
if you're an engineer or designer and you like price transparency our team is remote and we NEED you. DMs open
Trello, Monday . com, Asana, and SmartSheet are all bidding against eachother for eachother's names
everybody loses except the house
everybody loses except the house
LinkedIn does this
Salesforce has like 9 million SKUs
here are a few just within their Lightning Service Cloud product line
here are a few just within their Lightning Service Cloud product line
Lots of SaaS vendors run a/b tests on pricing and plans (so some plans may offer more features or consumable items for the same price). Worth opening an incognito window or turning on a VPN or checking from your phone before paying.
The first Microsoft Office in 1990 only included Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and cost $995.
That’s $1,958.09 in today’s dollars.
That’s $1,958.09 in today’s dollars.
Dropbox cost $9.99 a month for 50GB in 2009.
That’s $11.93 in today’s dollars—and for only 6¢ more today, you get 2TB of storage.
That’s $11.93 in today’s dollars—and for only 6¢ more today, you get 2TB of storage.
In the past 12 years, G Suite's per user per month cost has only increased by $1
Typeform costs over 3x what it did when it started charging in 2014.
Photoshop cost $1000 when it came out in 1990.
In today’s dollars, that’d pay for Creative Cloud Photography (including Photoshop and Lightroom) for 16.5 years.
In today’s dollars, that’d pay for Creative Cloud Photography (including Photoshop and Lightroom) for 16.5 years.
The best personal cloud storage deal is Office 365 Home. $79.99/month for 1TB of OneDrive storage per person for 6 people (and you could always make multiple accounts to use it all). And you get Office and Skype, too.
Selling online internationally and accepting payments via PayPal?
You’ll pay a 3.75% currency conversion spread to convert to your currency. Plus 2.9% + 30¢ up to 4.4% per transaction (depending on your market). Over 8% total before eCommerce store fees
You’ll pay a 3.75% currency conversion spread to convert to your currency. Plus 2.9% + 30¢ up to 4.4% per transaction (depending on your market). Over 8% total before eCommerce store fees
Shopify charges a percent of each transaction if you don’t use their payment processor.
Etsy only promotes items with “free” shipping—and charges fees on shipping charges collected by sellers.
VisiCalc, the world’s first spreadsheet, cost $99.95 when it was first released in the late 1970’s, only to rise to $250 a couple years later, then to fall back under a hundred dollars by 1985.
Software pricing in categories often converges. Today, you’ll likely spend around $10/month for streaming apps or file storage, $25/month for email newsletters with 2,000 subscribers $37/month for an unlimited form or survey app, and $65/month per user for a CRM.
A common new-ish way to restrict free plans is to limit the number of devices you can sync, as Evernote and Dropbox now do.
Software can get more expensive without raising prices. 14% of software we surveyed included fewer features in the same plans over time—and half of those also raised prices.
Save an easy 10% on your Mailchimp account (for 3 months, anyhow) by turning on 2-factor authentication.
Common small team hack for Zoom: Sign up for 1 paid account, and use it to start all your team’s meetings. Treat it like a shared conference room where your team schedules who’s using it.
It might be cheaper to use individual accounts and let your team expense them. Adobe Creative Cloud costs $52.99 for individuals, or $79.99 per person (or over 50% more) if you buy as a team.
Support isn’t always free. Canvas LMS charges 30% extra on your bill for support. AWS charges from 10% of your first $10k in AWS spend for support.
QuickBooks lists its pricing with a discount—that only lasts for 3 months. The real price you’ll pay is the one crossed out.
Video calls got far cheaper over the past decade—down 19% on average. A GoToMeeting plan that let 15 people attend your calls in 2010 is 26% cheaper today and lets 150 people join in.
File storage services’ base plans went up an average of 2% over the past decade—but offer 20-40x more storage for the same price.
Intercom charges the same today for 2,500 contacts as it did for 10k contacts originally.
Insightly’s price went from just under $5/month in 2012 to $29/month in 2019.
Asana’s price went up 3x in 5 years, from $3.33/month in 2012 to $9.99/month in 2017.
LastPass cost a dollar a month a decade ago. Today, it’s tripled to $3 a month.
Signing documents got twice as expensive over the past decade with DocuSign going from $19.95/month to $40/month.
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