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This is awesome. Aside from the fact that my bill will be cut in half, I hate plans. Plans are just one more thing to monitor (make sure you don't go over your

This is awesome. Aside from the fact that my bill will be cut in half, I hate plans. Plans are just one more thing to monitor (make sure you don't go over your totally arbitrary limit!), and they generally lead to weird inequity. For example, I've been adding ~75 people per day to my MailChimp list and the price stayed the same. Then one day it went from $75 to $150. Adding thousands of subscribers was completely free, and then adding one subscriber cost $75/month. That just doesn't make any sense to me. Related anecdote: My company doesn't have plans (most in the industry do) and customers tell me all the time how much they prefer our approach. There may be selection bias going on, but I have tons of feedback supporting my decision to avoid plans.

nmcfarl 13y ago
This is probably a nature of how the MailChimp plans are constructed. I know that the Zencoder plans get cheaper when you level up to the next one (and it’s worth while switching before you hit the minimum included minutes.) Plans can be done right - that is in a customer friendly fashion while still maintaining reoccurring revenue for the service.
- hijackson 13y ago
  Jocelyn. if you, thought Denise`s article is inconceivable, on monday I got a top of the range Toyota sincee geting a check for $7485 recently and also ten k this past-munth. no-doubt about it, this really is my favourite job I've ever done. I began this eight months/ago and pretty much straight away started to earn minimum $72.. per/hr. I work through this website,=====<<<>>>==== www.jobs34.com====<<<>>>====
aymeric 13y ago
Isn't your company Less Annoying CRM? I see a monthly plan on your pricing page, did I misunderstand what you meant by "My company doesn't have plans"? https://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/pricing.php https://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/pricing.php
- chrischen 13y ago
  I think he means plans with different tiers instead of one continuous tier.
- the_bear 13y ago
  Chrischen is right. Maybe I'm not using the term correctly, but I think of "plans" as meaning multiple different tiers that a user can choose from. Mailgun previously had plans (i.e. you had to pick which tier you wanted) and now they don't (i.e. there is just one tier that applies to everyone). Some characteristics of plans that I don't like: * Passing some arbitrary limit (# of contacts, # of users, # of files, etc) triggers a steep increase in price, rather than having the price gradually increase as usage increase. For Mailgun, usage is the number of emails sent. For us, it's the number of users on the account. * Because of the steep price increases at arbitrary points, some users get a lot more value out of the software than others. With Highrise (another CRM) an account with 5,000 contacts pays $24, while an account with 5,001 users pays $49/month. Both accounts are getting roughly the same value, but one is paying twice as much as the other. * Most SaaS companies with plans force users to choose which plan (or tier) they want when they sign up. How would a user know what features are worth paying for when they haven't even tried the software yet? * Plans are often used to upsell existing customers after they're locked into your service. Salesforce has a plan that is cheaper than my company's price ($5/user/month vs. $10/user/month) but it is limited to the point of being almost useless. I've talked to many people who got suckered into a 1+ year commitment with them only to realize they'd have to pay $65-$250/user/month to get the functionality they needed. * Customers have to monitor their usage to make sure they don't trigger the next tier. It's just one extra thing to worry about every day, and businesses have enough on their minds without worrying about unexpected price increases. Having said all of that, I'm currently struggling with how I might go about offering more products than just a CRM without making it look like a tiered system. I don't consider it to be the same thing because they really will be additional products (project management, invoicing, etc.) which are generally completely separate subscriptions if you use a different company's products, but I want them to be integrated/bundled directly with the CRM to make the user experience as simple as possible. Still not quite sure how to pull this off. Pricing sure is tricky.

nmcfarl 13y ago

This is probably a nature of how the MailChimp plans are constructed. I know that the Zencoder plans get cheaper when you level up to the next one (and it’s worth while switching before you hit the minimum included minutes.) Plans can be done right - that is in a customer friendly fashion while still maintaining reoccurring revenue for the service.

hijackson 13y ago
Jocelyn. if you, thought Denise`s article is inconceivable, on monday I got a top of the range Toyota sincee geting a check for $7485 recently and also ten k this past-munth. no-doubt about it, this really is my favourite job I've ever done. I began this eight months/ago and pretty much straight away started to earn minimum $72.. per/hr. I work through this website,=====<<<>>>==== www.jobs34.com====<<<>>>====

aymeric 13y ago

Isn't your company Less Annoying CRM? I see a monthly plan on your pricing page, did I misunderstand what you meant by "My company doesn't have plans"? https://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/pricing.php https://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/pricing.php

chrischen 13y ago
I think he means plans with different tiers instead of one continuous tier.
the_bear 13y ago
Chrischen is right. Maybe I'm not using the term correctly, but I think of "plans" as meaning multiple different tiers that a user can choose from. Mailgun previously had plans (i.e. you had to pick which tier you wanted) and now they don't (i.e. there is just one tier that applies to everyone). Some characteristics of plans that I don't like: * Passing some arbitrary limit (# of contacts, # of users, # of files, etc) triggers a steep increase in price, rather than having the price gradually increase as usage increase. For Mailgun, usage is the number of emails sent. For us, it's the number of users on the account. * Because of the steep price increases at arbitrary points, some users get a lot more value out of the software than others. With Highrise (another CRM) an account with 5,000 contacts pays $24, while an account with 5,001 users pays $49/month. Both accounts are getting roughly the same value, but one is paying twice as much as the other. * Most SaaS companies with plans force users to choose which plan (or tier) they want when they sign up. How would a user know what features are worth paying for when they haven't even tried the software yet? * Plans are often used to upsell existing customers after they're locked into your service. Salesforce has a plan that is cheaper than my company's price ($5/user/month vs. $10/user/month) but it is limited to the point of being almost useless. I've talked to many people who got suckered into a 1+ year commitment with them only to realize they'd have to pay $65-$250/user/month to get the functionality they needed. * Customers have to monitor their usage to make sure they don't trigger the next tier. It's just one extra thing to worry about every day, and businesses have enough on their minds without worrying about unexpected price increases. Having said all of that, I'm currently struggling with how I might go about offering more products than just a CRM without making it look like a tiered system. I don't consider it to be the same thing because they really will be additional products (project management, invoicing, etc.) which are generally completely separate subscriptions if you use a different company's products, but I want them to be integrated/bundled directly with the CRM to make the user experience as simple as possible. Still not quite sure how to pull this off. Pricing sure is tricky.