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I see a lot of conjecture about how secret pricing is or isn't beneficial, but one thing that seems to be overlooked is the complexity of enterprise class prici
by bmelton 17y ago
I see a lot of conjecture about how secret pricing is or isn't beneficial, but one thing that seems to be overlooked is the complexity of enterprise class pricing.
If I call BEA (now Oracle) for a portal, the application stack is modular down to app functions, such that if I want publishing in my portal, there's a publisher module. Document repository is a seperate cost as well. I could buy 'just portal' if I really wanted, but without speaking to a BEA sales rep, in the absence of a LOT of prior experience, I simply can't know WHAT to buy.
That said, I've always found the 'per-seat' pricing model to be a pretty effective form of price discrimination. $10 a seat means that the 100 employee company is only paying $1000, but the 30,000 employee company pays $300,000. It's fair(ish), and it's an effective way to scale support costs as well without having to pay per hour or incident.
- tptacek 17y agoThe problem with per-X licensing is that customers hate it. People will pay more for a flat-priced product than they will for the equivalent licensed version, even if there's a site license available. That doesn't make per-X licensing wrong (lots of web 2.0 startups seem to be doing well with it), but it's something to consider. For instance, consider the fact that the person making the buying decision at a customer might have to deal with a honorous justification, purchasing department, and PO process every time their license needs change.
- bmelton 17y agoInteresting. Most of my customers are government, so I guess that's where the difference lies -- they like having a number to point at and say "that's how much it costs". Whether or not it's the cheapest product, it's preferred to ambiguously priced applications. Of course, that's one of the main reasons they invented the GSA I guess.