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Meanwhile they have killed off the low-end of their market (and potential flow of new customers) by getting rid of their pricing pages and switching up to a “ca

Meanwhile they have killed off the low-end of their market (and potential flow of new customers) by getting rid of their pricing pages and switching up to a “call sales; request a demo” model. I can’t stand it when SaaS companies do this. I get yield management, but when Boeing and SpaceX have pricing pages it feels like a sleazy move. I know I know, their list prices are high, but at least you know what you’re getting into. Please, if you run a SaaS company, don’t turn to the dark side by removing prices. Increase them by a lot and change up the offering, but just keep a list price anywhere. If you don’t then you just create an opportunity for a new company to vacuum up all of your future business.

nedwin 9y ago
I’ve been thinking about this lately and I think the challenge is that your competitors in sales calls can reference and undercut your public pricing easily. This assumes your customer segment shops around and are price sensitive.
- bradgessler 9y ago
  That’s true for very simple products, the most extreme example being a commodity, but SaaS is very easy to differentiate via branding, features, service offerings, product assortment, etc. Carta appears to be a very high quality product that could command a premium over some other smaller cap table SaaS I’ve seen out there. Also, sophisticated buyers that are not price sensitive will shop around to get the best terms. Very large organizations with big budgets will run through an RFP process where the price comes out anyway. At the end of the day a price isn’t a secret. Hiding it just makes figuring it out more of a pain in the neck for a person evaluating a product.
rayshan 9y ago
This. We hear a lot about Carta's pricing from Captable.io customers. Some folks wouldn't sign up because they couldn't believe our pricing page. Disclaimer: I work at LTSE but not on Captable.io

nedwin 9y ago

I’ve been thinking about this lately and I think the challenge is that your competitors in sales calls can reference and undercut your public pricing easily. This assumes your customer segment shops around and are price sensitive.

bradgessler 9y ago
That’s true for very simple products, the most extreme example being a commodity, but SaaS is very easy to differentiate via branding, features, service offerings, product assortment, etc. Carta appears to be a very high quality product that could command a premium over some other smaller cap table SaaS I’ve seen out there. Also, sophisticated buyers that are not price sensitive will shop around to get the best terms. Very large organizations with big budgets will run through an RFP process where the price comes out anyway. At the end of the day a price isn’t a secret. Hiding it just makes figuring it out more of a pain in the neck for a person evaluating a product.

rayshan 9y ago

This. We hear a lot about Carta's pricing from Captable.io customers. Some folks wouldn't sign up because they couldn't believe our pricing page. Disclaimer: I work at LTSE but not on Captable.io