4 ms·

Is it really so hard for companies to provide a price range for Enterprise plan publicly on the pricing page? Why can't I, as an individual, have the same feat

by rrgok 3y ago

Is it really so hard for companies to provide a price range for Enterprise plan publicly on the pricing page? Why can't I, as an individual, have the same features of an Enterprise plan? What is the logic behind this practice other than profit maximization? I'm willing to pay more to have unlimited high-speed GTP4 and Longer inputs with 32k token context. EDIT: since I'm getting a lot of replies. Genuine question: how should I move to get a reasonable price as an individual for unlimited high-speed gpt4 and longer token context?

alexb_ 3y ago
>other than profit maximization Are you aware what the entire point of a business is?
HtmlProgrammer 3y ago
Because the price is so big they don’t want to scare you off with sticker shock, then they offer you a 85% discount to get you over the line
travisjungroth 3y ago
> What is the logic behind this practice other than profit maximization? That’s a real big “other than”…
fourseventy 3y ago
These enterprise deals will be $100k annually at least.
- danielvaughn 3y ago
  At least. I once spent months negotiating an enterprise deal that was initially quoted at $1M annually. We talked them down but it took a long time.
  - fourseventy 3y ago
    Wow. What type of software was it?
MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
> What is the logic behind this practice other than profit maximization? I don't know, but I can't imagine any other logic. Maybe posting the price they'd like to charge would scare away almost all interested parties. Maybe the price they charge you depends more on how much money they think you have than it does on a market's "decision" on what the product is worth.
pavlov 3y ago
> “I'm willing to pay more” How much more? That’s the question that “talk to us” enterprise pricing is trying to answer.
- toddmorey 3y ago
  This is really well put!
- zaat 3y ago
  I'm sure that's the correct answer, and that their very best was invested in analyzing the max profit strategy (as they should). What I'm wondering if it means that the minimal price they can offer the service with at profit, is likely to be too steep for anyone like me, who interpret "talk to us" as the online equivalent of showing him the door. The other explanation I see is that there's not many in the camp of users who react to "talk to us" button by closing the tab instead of a deal, but I find that implausible.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    > I'm wondering if it means that the minimal price they can offer the service with at profit, is likely to be too steep for anyone like me I think the answer to that is "no". The problem is that they don't want to reveal the minimal price to their initial round of customers. There are two basic ways you can think about pricing: cost-plus and value-minus. We programmers tend to like the former because it's clear, rational, and simple. But if you've got something of unknown value and want to maximize income, the latter can be much more appealing. The "talk to sales" approach means they're going to enter into a process where they find the people who can get the most out of the service. They're going to try to figure out the total value added by the service. And they'll negotiate down from there. (Or possibly up; somebody once said the goal of Oracle was to take all your money for their server software, and then another $50k/year for support.) Eventually, once they've figured out the value landscape, they'll probably come back for users like you, creating a commoditized product offering that's limited in ways that you don't care about but high-dollar customers can't live without. That will be closer to cost-plus. For example, note Github's pricing, which varies by more than 10x depending on what they think they can squeeze you for: https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing
danielvaughn 3y ago
Because it’s often heavily negotiated. At the enterprise level, custom requests are entertained, and teams can spend weeks or months building bespoke features for a single client. So yeah, it’s kinda fundamentally impossible.
- phillipcarter 3y ago
  Oh yes. I'm willing to bet that it involves things like progressive discounts on # of tokens or # of seats, etc etc. This is just how you get access to the big bucks.
FredPret 3y ago
Profit maximization is why ChatGPT even exists - why be surprised when that's the end result?
capableweb 3y ago
> What is the logic behind this practice other than profit maximization? Why would it be something else than profit maximization? It's a for-profit company, with stakeholders who want to maximize the possible profits coming from it, seems simple enough to grok, especially for users on S̵t̵a̵r̵t̵u̵p̵ ̵N̵e̵w̵s̵ Hacker News.
toddmorey 3y ago
Because the truth is, each deal is custom packaged and priced for each enterprise. It's all negotiated pricing. Call it "value pricing" or whatever you want, prices are set at the tolerance level of each company. A price-sensitive enterprise might pay $50k while another company won't blink at $80k for essentially the same services.
xgl5k 3y ago
they should just create another consumer tier with those. there shouldn't be a need for individuals to want the Enterprise plan.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sarnowski 3y ago
If it goes to the direction of Microsoft Copilot, then you can check out the recent announcement. Microsoft currently estimates that 30/user/month is a good list price to get „ChatGPT with all your business context“ to your employees. https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/07/18/furthering-our-ai-ambitions-announcing-bing-chat-enterprise-and-microsoft-365-copilot-pricing/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/07/18/furthering-our-a...

by rrgok 3y ago

alexb_ 3y ago

>other than profit maximization Are you aware what the entire point of a business is?

HtmlProgrammer 3y ago

Because the price is so big they don’t want to scare you off with sticker shock, then they offer you a 85% discount to get you over the line

travisjungroth 3y ago

> What is the logic behind this practice other than profit maximization? That’s a real big “other than”…

fourseventy 3y ago

These enterprise deals will be $100k annually at least.

danielvaughn 3y ago
At least. I once spent months negotiating an enterprise deal that was initially quoted at $1M annually. We talked them down but it took a long time.
- fourseventy 3y ago
  Wow. What type of software was it?

MathMonkeyMan 3y ago

> What is the logic behind this practice other than profit maximization? I don't know, but I can't imagine any other logic. Maybe posting the price they'd like to charge would scare away almost all interested parties. Maybe the price they charge you depends more on how much money they think you have than it does on a market's "decision" on what the product is worth.

pavlov 3y ago

> “I'm willing to pay more” How much more? That’s the question that “talk to us” enterprise pricing is trying to answer.

toddmorey 3y ago
This is really well put!
zaat 3y ago
I'm sure that's the correct answer, and that their very best was invested in analyzing the max profit strategy (as they should). What I'm wondering if it means that the minimal price they can offer the service with at profit, is likely to be too steep for anyone like me, who interpret "talk to us" as the online equivalent of showing him the door. The other explanation I see is that there's not many in the camp of users who react to "talk to us" button by closing the tab instead of a deal, but I find that implausible.
- wpietri 3y ago
  > I'm wondering if it means that the minimal price they can offer the service with at profit, is likely to be too steep for anyone like me I think the answer to that is "no". The problem is that they don't want to reveal the minimal price to their initial round of customers. There are two basic ways you can think about pricing: cost-plus and value-minus. We programmers tend to like the former because it's clear, rational, and simple. But if you've got something of unknown value and want to maximize income, the latter can be much more appealing. The "talk to sales" approach means they're going to enter into a process where they find the people who can get the most out of the service. They're going to try to figure out the total value added by the service. And they'll negotiate down from there. (Or possibly up; somebody once said the goal of Oracle was to take all your money for their server software, and then another $50k/year for support.) Eventually, once they've figured out the value landscape, they'll probably come back for users like you, creating a commoditized product offering that's limited in ways that you don't care about but high-dollar customers can't live without. That will be closer to cost-plus. For example, note Github's pricing, which varies by more than 10x depending on what they think they can squeeze you for: https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing

danielvaughn 3y ago

Because it’s often heavily negotiated. At the enterprise level, custom requests are entertained, and teams can spend weeks or months building bespoke features for a single client. So yeah, it’s kinda fundamentally impossible.

phillipcarter 3y ago
Oh yes. I'm willing to bet that it involves things like progressive discounts on # of tokens or # of seats, etc etc. This is just how you get access to the big bucks.

FredPret 3y ago

Profit maximization is why ChatGPT even exists - why be surprised when that's the end result?

capableweb 3y ago

> What is the logic behind this practice other than profit maximization? Why would it be something else than profit maximization? It's a for-profit company, with stakeholders who want to maximize the possible profits coming from it, seems simple enough to grok, especially for users on S̵t̵a̵r̵t̵u̵p̵ ̵N̵e̵w̵s̵ Hacker News.

toddmorey 3y ago

Because the truth is, each deal is custom packaged and priced for each enterprise. It's all negotiated pricing. Call it "value pricing" or whatever you want, prices are set at the tolerance level of each company. A price-sensitive enterprise might pay $50k while another company won't blink at $80k for essentially the same services.

xgl5k 3y ago

they should just create another consumer tier with those. there shouldn't be a need for individuals to want the Enterprise plan.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sarnowski 3y ago

If it goes to the direction of Microsoft Copilot, then you can check out the recent announcement. Microsoft currently estimates that 30/user/month is a good list price to get „ChatGPT with all your business context“ to your employees. https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/07/18/furthering-our-ai-ambitions-announcing-bing-chat-enterprise-and-microsoft-365-copilot-pricing/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/07/18/furthering-our-a...