"This, of course, is unusual in our industry. Many of our competitors, and nearly every company that sells enterprise software, charge per user (or per seat, in

"This, of course, is unusual in our industry. Many of our competitors, and nearly every company that sells enterprise software, charge per user (or per seat, in industry parlance)." Could be also be a case of being the fool at the table. If everyone in your industry prices a certain way and you don't, sure maybe you are inventing a new model and not taking advantage of people. But maybe there are reasons they do this that you don't understand yet or haven't experienced? One example is what I would call "the rule of large numbers". If I have 200,000 people using my service there are going to be more problems that show up then when I have 10 users. Let's say I offer webhosting to a single customer with 10 employee email boxes for a total of $20 per month so then I have one set of customer support issues based upon the number of people that could potentially have problems. Now let's say I offer a webhosting reseller account for $20 per month. And the reseller can offer 500 sub users each of which have the potential to create 10 employee email boxes per account. So potentially there are 5000 email accounts that are now setup. And you don't think there will be more support issues with 5000 email boxes then with 10? And you don't think if there is a service interruption there will be more pressure to get things restored when 5000 users are having problems rather than 10? And more legal liability? More "seats" creates more potential issues. I've had equipment service contracts in the past where the service provider only authorizes a single point of contact. They don't want to have to deal with a bunch of newbies using the equipment each time it jams. They want a person who will ride over those newbies and already be able to intercept any cases that they have already been trained for.