Ask HN: SaaS pricing pages with high prices and not “contact sales”
62 comments
I run https://serverthiefbait.com/ and the highest plan is $900 (not recurring). However, nearly everyone who buys that plan seems to mail me with special requests, which I usually do for free but probably should switch to a 'contact sales' model and decide the price based on the customers needs.
It's usually things like "can you help us with automation to roll this out to every one of our users home directories", or "we want every wallet tagged with the computer name and path so we can respond quicker if theft is detected". Legit requests, but not features built into the built-in-a-weekend service.
It's usually things like "can you help us with automation to roll this out to every one of our users home directories", or "we want every wallet tagged with the computer name and path so we can respond quicker if theft is detected". Legit requests, but not features built into the built-in-a-weekend service.
That's a really neat little business. I like it a lot.
This is such a good idea. I’m going to sign up!
You’ve got a tiny typo (“age” is listed twice) in your fourth FAQ:
age, software version, file format, age
You’ve got a tiny typo (“age” is listed twice) in your fourth FAQ:
age, software version, file format, age
The site is hosted on appengine and I decided that the (rather huge) effort google wants me to go through to redeploy now wasn't worth it for one typo.
If I ever add any features worth bragging about, I'll fix that and migrate off appengine all at the same time.
If I ever add any features worth bragging about, I'll fix that and migrate off appengine all at the same time.
Same thing for https://uxwizz.com
I never wake up to a random Agency $1500 sale, all high paying customers send emails and discuss their use-case before.
I never wake up to a random Agency $1500 sale, all high paying customers send emails and discuss their use-case before.
Oh, and pretty interesting that your service looks like it would go well with customers self-hosting my platform.
Curious, who is your target audience? I can't figure out whether you're selling to the CEOs or the Engineering Managers. and how do you target them?
It's a weekend project... The target audience is anyone scared their private data isn't as safe as they hoped. From individuals, to sysadmins to CEO's.
Sure, it probably would have been better to make 3 services tailored to each of those 3 personas, but that is beyond the scope of a weekend project.
Sure, it probably would have been better to make 3 services tailored to each of those 3 personas, but that is beyond the scope of a weekend project.
Putting crypto as bait. Damn that is a good idea.
Space-as-a-Service is the highest one I know posted
https://www.spacex.com/media/Capabilities&Services.pdf
https://www.spacex.com/media/Capabilities&Services.pdf
Along these lines: https://www.skyfi.com/pricing
Whoa, that's awesome. Imagine all the points you can get by using a personal card and then expensing it. :)
They offer ride share! So cheap. Cheaper than Uber surge pricing!
https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/
https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/
I’m fine if you have a “contact us” for a true enterprise plan, but companies that have actual pricing plans should post them. I way prefer to buy from SaaS companies that display their pricing up front rather than trying to get me on the phone to talk with an account executive.
I’m not scared to pay serious money for a service, but putting your service behind a sales person is more than likely going to cost you my business.
I’m not scared to pay serious money for a service, but putting your service behind a sales person is more than likely going to cost you my business.
That might be what you prefer; but just not how the world works. For large fees just a much higher likelihood of sales after a personal connection has been made
A higher likelihood of sales isn’t something a buyer is looking for, though. If I’m browsing for a service to solve a problem, a low likelihood of being chased by a sales person for the rest of the year is interesting though.
> A higher likelihood of sales isn’t something a buyer is looking for, though.
It's what the sellers are looking for though. And the sellers generally are the ones making these sites.
If you want to put up a website describing what you want to buy, and put a very explicit chart about what you're willing to pay, you're more than free to do so.
It's what the sellers are looking for though. And the sellers generally are the ones making these sites.
If you want to put up a website describing what you want to buy, and put a very explicit chart about what you're willing to pay, you're more than free to do so.
Shouldn’t the sellers should be looking for what the buyers want?
Depends on the market.
In a market with a lot of sellers with essentially the same product (like a commodity market)? Sure. Prices tend to be pretty transparent in markets like that, because that's what buyers want.
In a market with a small number of sellers, with product distinction (different features, regulatory compliance, etc)? Depends on what we're talking about. Probably not on a thing like price, but a feature that a buyer is willing to pay for up front would probably be much more important.
In a market with a lot of sellers with essentially the same product (like a commodity market)? Sure. Prices tend to be pretty transparent in markets like that, because that's what buyers want.
In a market with a small number of sellers, with product distinction (different features, regulatory compliance, etc)? Depends on what we're talking about. Probably not on a thing like price, but a feature that a buyer is willing to pay for up front would probably be much more important.
Sellers care about maximizing their profit.
Maybe sales people within sellers do. The companies as a whole should worry about losing market-share to competitors and eventually getting shut out of the market. Getting this or that high-profile contract isn't worth much if those contracts switch away one year later citing that your competitor is "what everyone uses now."
This feels like wishful-thinking rather than having any basis in reality. Many SaaS providers with _Contact Us_ pricing are market leaders.
That's an effect, not a cause. You can "afford" contact-us pricing, once you've got a monopoly stranglehold on an industry. You can't afford it when you're a scrappy newcomer fighting for mindshare.
That doesn't track, at least in my experience. Custom Enterprise pricing is prevalent and advantageous at all levels.
Honestly, it seems to me that you just don't like the practice and so are rationalising.
Honestly, it seems to me that you just don't like the practice and so are rationalising.
Well obviously because you’re sales team is only talking to warm leads that decide to reach out. The question becomes how many people bounced that might have purchased because 1) it felt like a hassle 2) expecting sleezy sales shenanigans and upsell and custom contract negotiations 3) they may wrongly assume if they can’t afford it if since “contact sells” gives no context
A sales team closing on warms leads feels good and all, but you might be leaving cash on the table by running off people that aren’t interested in that type of sales cycle
A sales team closing on warms leads feels good and all, but you might be leaving cash on the table by running off people that aren’t interested in that type of sales cycle
Having done SaaS and PaaS implementations for a bank, there were very few turn key enterprise contracts. They all went through redlining, addendums and custom enhancement processes and these negotiations usually took 3-12 months to complete (months just for an NDA). This is why you don’t see standard pricing.
Mine goes up to $6k/mo: https://keygen.sh/pricing/. I started using transparent pricing a couple years ago because I was tired of answering the same questions over and over again for enterprise leads.
We’re even more tired of the asking.
“Contact us” == “speak to us so we can gauge how much we can shake you down for”
“Contact us” == “speak to us so we can gauge how much we can shake you down for”
Exactly. Now the sales cycle is much easier, and can usually be done in an email instead of a series of pointless calls to size each other up.
From my experience, anyone looking to spend more than $1000 per month will want to have a conversation with someone.
They might not require any additional features, but many companies will need an account manager's email address to enter into their procurement system.
So “contact us” helps both sides.
They might not require any additional features, but many companies will need an account manager's email address to enter into their procurement system.
So “contact us” helps both sides.
But I still want to know what sort of a ballpark I’ll getting in to. Is it $1/month per user? Or $100? Hiding all prices behind “contact us” makes window shopping expensive to me and I’ll likely just move along.
What does "looking to spend" mean? As a CTO, I don't shop SaaS "looking to spend" any particular amount of money; service providers can charge amounts for their services that are multiple orders of magnitude (!) apart, so I keep a completely open mind about how much it might cost to solve my problem (and in fact what type of service I need to solve my problem.)
For example: if my problem is "my egress-bandwidth bills are too high and my servers are falling over from the traffic", I could pay Akamai "contact us" dollars a month (probably thousands; maybe more than my egress-bandwidth costs!); or I could — potentially, depending on what I'm serving — pay Cloudflare $0 or $20 per month, with very legible rules about what would qualify me for those free/cheap plans. These aren't the same type of service: one's doing static pre-caching, mostly of large assets; while the other is doing short-term read-through caching, mostly of small assets. But they both solve an egress-bandwidth problem; and if you have no other constraints, then they are effective replacement goods for one-another.
For example: if my problem is "my egress-bandwidth bills are too high and my servers are falling over from the traffic", I could pay Akamai "contact us" dollars a month (probably thousands; maybe more than my egress-bandwidth costs!); or I could — potentially, depending on what I'm serving — pay Cloudflare $0 or $20 per month, with very legible rules about what would qualify me for those free/cheap plans. These aren't the same type of service: one's doing static pre-caching, mostly of large assets; while the other is doing short-term read-through caching, mostly of small assets. But they both solve an egress-bandwidth problem; and if you have no other constraints, then they are effective replacement goods for one-another.
You are absolutely correct. ‘Looking to spend’ was not the accurate term to use. I should have said ‘looking to solve the problem,’ with a budget exceeding $1000/month.
We do a "starting from 2k" enterprise package on our pricing page @ https://emulator.wtf/pricing.
Internally, we do have a calculator for various "enterprise" tiers where you can throw in the specific resource amounts that you'd be looking for and it applies various bulk discounts etc and gets you a specific number. Maybe we should make that public as well instead of a generic "enterprise" package..
Internally, we do have a calculator for various "enterprise" tiers where you can throw in the specific resource amounts that you'd be looking for and it applies various bulk discounts etc and gets you a specific number. Maybe we should make that public as well instead of a generic "enterprise" package..
I work for FusionAuth. You can buy our Enterprise plan online with a credit card: https://fusionauth.io/pricing?step=plan&hosting=ha-cloud
With one hosting environment, that comes to $3800/month (or more if you are in certain locales).
It's been done, but not often. More often folks at that price point want to talk to sales people to understand the product or perhaps do a POC.
People seem to appreciate the ability to shop prices, though.
With one hosting environment, that comes to $3800/month (or more if you are in certain locales).
It's been done, but not often. More often folks at that price point want to talk to sales people to understand the product or perhaps do a POC.
People seem to appreciate the ability to shop prices, though.
No not really. The reason why is because high prices require high touch points.
I believe you are asking if people show high prices up front for low touch point services. Sometimes they provide enterprise pricing.
I believe you are asking if people show high prices up front for low touch point services. Sometimes they provide enterprise pricing.
Mixpanel handles this pretty well: https://mixpanel.com/pricing
I remember Google analytics listing 150k/year for the enterprise offering, stating something along NG the lines: "we like simple pricing".
It was 10 years ago, I don't know if that has changed since.
It was 10 years ago, I don't know if that has changed since.
We provide a GPU visual graph AI platform that gets used by folks looking at relationships & correlations in their data (think cyber, fraud, social, supply chain, genomics), and came to this: https://www.graphistry.com/get-started
Many folks are individuals, or highly technical and do not want to engage, so they want to just try for themselves. Imagine a Splunk or Databricks analyst who likes to do notebooks on the side. On the other end, we'll have architects planning say a $1M or $20M data project for the next few years of their dept's data arch, and want to really think through scaling.
So we split between free/cheap self-serve SaaS, where people can just go without thinking about any infra etc, to the more enterprise self-hosting tier where they can run in their own cloud, and decide whether they like to do on their own (ex: very clear & immediate task), and when they want to talk about GPUs, graphs, AI, LLMs, etc., and how that can accelerate or solve some of the harder problems they're ultimately tackling, they have a way to reach out and we can share our experiences from similar orgs.
For louie.ai, we're basically preparing to do the same. It's possible to optimize on this stuff for enterprise teams, but we don't see much of a need: when we're solving a real enterprise problem, and are speaking our users language via our public talks, blogposts, etc, they'll check the page to make sure the form factor can make sense and it's indeed in their problem area, and then they want to talk. When something is a top 3 priority for a dept, they'll be getting on zoom calls with multiple vendors, so just need to make it easy for them to do that.
Many folks are individuals, or highly technical and do not want to engage, so they want to just try for themselves. Imagine a Splunk or Databricks analyst who likes to do notebooks on the side. On the other end, we'll have architects planning say a $1M or $20M data project for the next few years of their dept's data arch, and want to really think through scaling.
So we split between free/cheap self-serve SaaS, where people can just go without thinking about any infra etc, to the more enterprise self-hosting tier where they can run in their own cloud, and decide whether they like to do on their own (ex: very clear & immediate task), and when they want to talk about GPUs, graphs, AI, LLMs, etc., and how that can accelerate or solve some of the harder problems they're ultimately tackling, they have a way to reach out and we can share our experiences from similar orgs.
For louie.ai, we're basically preparing to do the same. It's possible to optimize on this stuff for enterprise teams, but we don't see much of a need: when we're solving a real enterprise problem, and are speaking our users language via our public talks, blogposts, etc, they'll check the page to make sure the form factor can make sense and it's indeed in their problem area, and then they want to talk. When something is a top 3 priority for a dept, they'll be getting on zoom calls with multiple vendors, so just need to make it easy for them to do that.
Atlassian Marketplace does this for all their 3rd-party apps, e.g. https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1229877/ilograph-inte...
You can put in any number from 1 to 50,000 users and get an exact quote. This is possible because there's zero additional setup for an app already in an ecosystem like this. Compare that to onboarding an enterprise to a SaaS solution, or an on-prem solution, which could be a significant amount of work depending on many factors.
You can put in any number from 1 to 50,000 users and get an exact quote. This is possible because there's zero additional setup for an app already in an ecosystem like this. Compare that to onboarding an enterprise to a SaaS solution, or an on-prem solution, which could be a significant amount of work depending on many factors.
FusionAuth: It’s a form but not onerous to get to some prices. The base plans can be quite a bit cheaper though.
https://fusionauth.io/pricing
We recently found that the new artillery.io service is going to be something like $600 or $1200 a month.
It's not exactly front and center, and I think it's not fully released yet, but they do have the price in the FAQ which I respect.
It's not exactly front and center, and I think it's not fully released yet, but they do have the price in the FAQ which I respect.
Both Dune [0] and Nansen [1] in the cryptocurrency data analytics space have high monthly price points. Note that Nansen still has a "Contact Sales" button with a $2k / month price — I imagine this follows the "always allow someone to pay you more" advice I've seen across HN over the years.
[0] - https://dune.com/pricing [1] - https://www.nansen.ai/plans
[0] - https://dune.com/pricing [1] - https://www.nansen.ai/plans
This is how we price: https://www.demandsphere.com/pricing/
How do you fare with 'just' 14 free days?
I always find that if I get busy, or life just gets in the way that 14 days isn't always enough.
I have, though, with certain vendors, negotiated a certain number of hours that I have always used (and if I've not continued to use the product I've always provided honest feedback as to why not).
Usually our conversations are pretty involved with customers so if they need more time to evaluate something it’s not an issue to extend their trial.
Kinda curious why I’d be downvoted for directly answering the question.
supabase just added their $599 tier for their soc2/hippa compliant product. really appreciated that.
Currents.dev has 12 pricing levels, ranging from $40/mo to $1170/mo, until you hit the "contact us" phase: https://currents.dev/#pricing
FWIW that's a horrible pricing page, so I'd not get too inspired by it.
FastComments does a combination of Flex and a high flat priced tier: https://fastcomments.com/traffic-pricing
The bigger usually customers just reach out anyway.
The bigger usually customers just reach out anyway.
See self-hosted pricing from this company's page https://jfrog.com/pricing/
It does have contact sales, but only after a 43k per year tier!
It does have contact sales, but only after a 43k per year tier!
GitHub has price listed for "enterprise" plan - ironically it's clear as mud why anyone would want to pay 7x the team plan ...
https://github.com/pricing
https://github.com/pricing
SSO Tax
40,000 a year for a support contract.
https://bionic-gpt.com/services/
https://bionic-gpt.com/services/
Rainforest API until recently used to show as much as $40,000 plans. Something of this magnitude. See if you get that via Archive.
Casetext's Compose is, IIRC, $400 per head. Niche space though.
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The only one that comes to mind for me is HubSpot [0]. But I'm sure there are many more.
[0] https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/marketing/enterprise?hubs_content=www.hubspot.com%2F&hubs_content-cta=hsg-nav__link-active&products=marketing-hub-professional_1&term=annual