3 ms·

In the UK as a startup we found buying Silicon Valley SaaS tools to be a bit different sometimes in similar ways. Europe, even the UK, prices tech startup sign

In the UK as a startup we found buying Silicon Valley SaaS tools to be a bit different sometimes in similar ways. Europe, even the UK, prices tech startup significantly lower than the US (a colleague once said that in the US you get funding to turn an idea into execution, in Europe you get funding to turn your execution into money), plus we were tech/retail, so our valuation was just never the same as a pure-tech (or SaaS) business. Because of this, we had numerous SaaS pricing discussions where the sales rep didn't seem to understand that their pricing was just a non-starter for us. "Why wouldn't you pay $15k a month to save half an engineer's worth of work?"... because our engineers don't cost that much, and we don't have that money. So much of SaaS pricing is predicated on customers being B2B, pure-tech, VC-funded, plenty of funding, with exceptionally high engineering costs. Essentially: cost is not a concern. Most of the world is not going to pay another $30/m subscription for every employee.

mgrandl 5mo ago
I am at a pretty good (for european standards) startup, entirely bootstrapped with no investor money. We use virtually 0 SaaS ourselves with the exception of tailscale. The pay $40/user/month pricing seems insane for what most of these things do and they are almost always trivial to selfhost. Of course if you have millions of investor money to waste, it’s a drop in the bucket.
- d1ss0nanz 5mo ago
  Same. And even for Tailscale we use a European alternative (Xplicittrust), because this aggressive growth of VC backed American tech is a real turn-off. We have seen where that leads often enough by now.
  - uxcolumbo 5mo ago
    A bit turned off by their 'contact us for pricing' line. Why not show your pricing like any other provider does?
    - d1ss0nanz 5mo ago
      They only sell indirectly. Common concept in Europe.
l23k4 5mo ago
Funny, I've recently (and repeatedly) had the exact opposite experience while negotiating SaaS contracts for my largely London-based startup. Contact UK sales team? They don't believe we could even use their product because we're not a BigCo with thousands of employees. After weeks of back and forth calls, they ask us to pay $100k to get "certified" for API access, with further details on pricing available afterwards. Endless warnings about multiple customers purchasing the API product but lacking the technical ability to implement it. Contact US sales team? Contract signed and account set up within 2 days, $3k a month. Same company, same product.
- bonesss 5mo ago
  > customers purchasing the API product but lacking the technical ability to implement it Oh, wow, salesdrone. Sell me harder on what a good interface you’re selling. What else, do we have occasional non-reproducible behaviour? Frequent stability and scaling issues? … … non-standard error codes, dare I hope? Don’t tell me, the excitement is in finding out the hard way, just take our credit cards.
  - l23k4 5mo ago
    That particular API is actually perfectly fine, stable and relatively pleasant to work with. I have absolutely no idea what the UK sales team was trying to do. Some kind of negging? Perhaps they trained at Tate university.

mgrandl 5mo ago

I am at a pretty good (for european standards) startup, entirely bootstrapped with no investor money. We use virtually 0 SaaS ourselves with the exception of tailscale. The pay $40/user/month pricing seems insane for what most of these things do and they are almost always trivial to selfhost. Of course if you have millions of investor money to waste, it’s a drop in the bucket.

d1ss0nanz 5mo ago
Same. And even for Tailscale we use a European alternative (Xplicittrust), because this aggressive growth of VC backed American tech is a real turn-off. We have seen where that leads often enough by now.
- uxcolumbo 5mo ago
  A bit turned off by their 'contact us for pricing' line. Why not show your pricing like any other provider does?
  - d1ss0nanz 5mo ago
    They only sell indirectly. Common concept in Europe.

l23k4 5mo ago

Funny, I've recently (and repeatedly) had the exact opposite experience while negotiating SaaS contracts for my largely London-based startup. Contact UK sales team? They don't believe we could even use their product because we're not a BigCo with thousands of employees. After weeks of back and forth calls, they ask us to pay $100k to get "certified" for API access, with further details on pricing available afterwards. Endless warnings about multiple customers purchasing the API product but lacking the technical ability to implement it. Contact US sales team? Contract signed and account set up within 2 days, $3k a month. Same company, same product.

bonesss 5mo ago
> customers purchasing the API product but lacking the technical ability to implement it Oh, wow, salesdrone. Sell me harder on what a good interface you’re selling. What else, do we have occasional non-reproducible behaviour? Frequent stability and scaling issues? … … non-standard error codes, dare I hope? Don’t tell me, the excitement is in finding out the hard way, just take our credit cards.
- l23k4 5mo ago
  That particular API is actually perfectly fine, stable and relatively pleasant to work with. I have absolutely no idea what the UK sales team was trying to do. Some kind of negging? Perhaps they trained at Tate university.