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I'm curious to hear from a SaaS which moved from a public to a non-public pricing (or vice-versa). Why did you do it? Did it work better?

by agopaul 11y ago

berkay 11y ago
We chose not to do so, but I can tell you why you'd move to non-public pricing (at least have a non public pricing tier). As much as people love to blame vendors, this is mostly due to dysfunctional nature of the large enterprise buyers. They are addicted to discounts. First the buyer contacts you asks for one then after everything gets said and done done, procurement gets involved and ask for more discounts (seen as their job). Having listed pricing becomes a problem when going through such process, so most vendors either choose not to publish their prices, or have a tier for the enterprise that is not published.
gk1 11y ago
I'm a customer acquisition consultant for B2B software co's, so I've been involved in a fair amount of decisions around this. Without sharing specifics, I can objectively say that requiring prospects to contact you to learn about pricing will... 1. ... Weed out non-serious prospects such as students, freelancers, small businesses, etc. 2. ... NOT deter serious prospects (enterprise users). They are used to this process and even expect it.
- agopaul 11y ago
  Makes sense, but what if you want to sell to both SMB and enterprise customers?
  - gk1 11y ago
    That's when you show prices for all but the enterprise plan, for which you have a "Contact Us" button.
- Chris2048 11y ago
  Is serious/non-serious so binary? My biggest issue is I wouldn't want to commit anything, or give too much information away just to get a ballpark figure. I'd also assume that I'd be aiding price discrimination - There is no problem having up-front ballpark pricing and a 'contact us' link. Hell, just having a high ballpark figure will weed out students and small businesses.
  - gk1 11y ago
    > There is no problem having up-front ballpark pricing There certainly is, and it's a bigger problem than potentially turning away people who are uneasy about sharing contact info. Just to name one: A SaaS company may be willing to undercut a competitor's price for a sufficiently big prospect, but advertising a high price at the outset may turn that prospect away before you have a chance to talk to them.
intrasight 11y ago
We had three or four plans, the last being "enterprise/contact us". We found that we were only making money on enterprise customers and hence the price page became just "contact us" - so we took the page away. I expect that MANY SaaS vendors go through the same pivot.

I'm curious to hear from a SaaS which moved from a public to a non-public pricing (or vice-versa). Why did you do it? Did it work better?

by agopaul 11y ago

I'm curious to hear from a SaaS which moved from a public to a non-public pricing (or vice-versa). Why did you do it? Did it work better?

berkay 11y ago

We chose not to do so, but I can tell you why you'd move to non-public pricing (at least have a non public pricing tier). As much as people love to blame vendors, this is mostly due to dysfunctional nature of the large enterprise buyers. They are addicted to discounts. First the buyer contacts you asks for one then after everything gets said and done done, procurement gets involved and ask for more discounts (seen as their job). Having listed pricing becomes a problem when going through such process, so most vendors either choose not to publish their prices, or have a tier for the enterprise that is not published.

gk1 11y ago

I'm a customer acquisition consultant for B2B software co's, so I've been involved in a fair amount of decisions around this. Without sharing specifics, I can objectively say that requiring prospects to contact you to learn about pricing will... 1. ... Weed out non-serious prospects such as students, freelancers, small businesses, etc. 2. ... NOT deter serious prospects (enterprise users). They are used to this process and even expect it.

agopaul 11y ago
Makes sense, but what if you want to sell to both SMB and enterprise customers?
- gk1 11y ago
  That's when you show prices for all but the enterprise plan, for which you have a "Contact Us" button.
Chris2048 11y ago
Is serious/non-serious so binary? My biggest issue is I wouldn't want to commit anything, or give too much information away just to get a ballpark figure. I'd also assume that I'd be aiding price discrimination - There is no problem having up-front ballpark pricing and a 'contact us' link. Hell, just having a high ballpark figure will weed out students and small businesses.
- gk1 11y ago
  > There is no problem having up-front ballpark pricing There certainly is, and it's a bigger problem than potentially turning away people who are uneasy about sharing contact info. Just to name one: A SaaS company may be willing to undercut a competitor's price for a sufficiently big prospect, but advertising a high price at the outset may turn that prospect away before you have a chance to talk to them.

intrasight 11y ago

We had three or four plans, the last being "enterprise/contact us". We found that we were only making money on enterprise customers and hence the price page became just "contact us" - so we took the page away. I expect that MANY SaaS vendors go through the same pivot.