[HN Gopher] Ask HN: "Contact Us" Pricing
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Ask HN: "Contact Us" Pricing
Hi everyone, I've been tasked with finding ballpark pricing for a
dozen-item list of enterprise SaaS software. The websites for most
of these packages list the price as "Contact Us," and I'd like to
avoid spending the next month in sales calls. Is there a website
or service that lists cost ranges for enterprise SaaS products?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Author : mrtomservo
Score : 148 points
Date : 2022-11-01 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
| tptacek wrote:
| One trick, just to ballpark this --- it probably worked better 10
| years ago than today, but I checked a couple vendors and got
| results --- is to Google the vendor and "GSA price list" (for
| their FedGov pricing).
| smithcoin wrote:
| Seems like a good side project. A database where people could
| submit their SAAS pricing in a Glassdoor like fashion.
| gorkish wrote:
| I find incredible irony in that the companies like Gartner that
| perform this exact service are all basically "call for
| bespoke/maximal pricing" as well.
| legitster wrote:
| Some sites like Capterra or TrustRadius will _occasionally_ have
| pricing data about various products.
|
| If you go through a third party vendor or MSP, they may also be
| able to give you more realistic pricing data based on existing
| customers.
|
| But honestly, picking up a phone and calling is good practice
| anyway. If you can't get an honest ballpark estimate within 5
| minutes that's not a company you want to work with anyway.
| imagine99 wrote:
| "Professional" subreddits, such as /r/MSP, as well as the
| Spiceworks community will have answers for some of those,
| depending on what kind of SaaS it is exactly. Ask, oftentimes
| (former) vendor reps or happy/unhappy customers lurk there and
| are happy to help you out, although their info might be outdated
| - but it may help for a first orientation.
|
| (I, too, consider price-hiding the bane of my existence and wish
| I could get those days and months of lifetime back that I spend
| going through useless "demos" and "quick calls with an
| evangelist/key account manager/person who nopes out at the first
| technical question".)
|
| Another strategy is that you prepare a long-ish text that you
| email to a - perferrably senior - sales contact at each company,
| ideally one that has been referred to you (again, the above-
| mentioned sources may help).
|
| Just change the name and first line mentioning their product and
| outline that "due to internal restructuring" your company will
| decide yea or nay "on doing a PoC within the next three working
| days" (i.e. you don't have time to waste on demos), that you are
| already very familiar with their product in all details from an
| earlier job, in fact, you _want_ to recommend to your CTO to buy
| it, and that you wish to receive nothing more than their current
| pricing for $detailedreqs asap. Be overspecific as to your reqs
| and specs, so they can 't weasel out with "it depends".
|
| You might need to go one or two rounds where they try and talk
| you into doing calls/demos regardless but they will often CC more
| senior or local reps whose contacts are not public and if you
| push back repeating what you said in your first email but
| shorter, they will usually relent, especially if there are
| competitors in the field and they're getting afraid that the lead
| may go cold.
|
| This strategy works maybe about 78.3% of the time but will likely
| fail if the SaaS offering does require extensive and bespoke
| customisation for your organisation.
|
| Good luck, I really don't envy you having to go through this, to
| me it used to be like running the gauntlet.
| startupsales wrote:
| I have pricing on my site revpilots.com for various enterprise
| software that is normally not listed publicly. We'll even get on
| calls for you to get pricing.
| evilotto wrote:
| To be fair to the annoying "call us" pricing practice, on your
| end you need to have a ballpark idea of what you want, whether
| its number of seats, data size, or whatever the product is sized
| in. Having that makes the calls go faster and can help you and
| the salesguy save time if there isn't even a chance of a match.
| Multicomp wrote:
| Don't B2B companies do something like RFPs where they do a
| request for pricing and give a boilerplate / generic usecase of
| number of users, number of requests etc and expect the companies
| to bid back on results?
|
| Maybe something like that could help you / maybe there is a
| business opportunity there to do aggregated sales calls so these
| companies can be compared side-by-side (though they probably
| would give inflated rates like hospitals do because they know
| insurance will knock the prices down).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| My SaaS has only "Contact Sales" pricing right now because I
| currently don't have the infrastructure set up to sell to you in
| any other way. If the SaaS companies are young, they may be in
| the same situation. You could get a good deal by clicking the
| button.
|
| Generally, the less you charge, the more infrastructure is
| involved in collecting payment - metered SaaS companies can
| charge you in increments of a few dollars but are backed by
| complex billing software, while enterprise sales is an invoice
| from quickbooks (I'm exaggerating a little bit about the level of
| automation here, but it's close to this).
|
| Personally, the price for my "contact sales" product is a lot
| less than a typical "enterprise sales" product, with the price
| range being $10-50k. Some other young SaaS companies I have heard
| of are lower than that. Conversely, established companies with a
| "contact sales" button tend to start at $50k/year and go up from
| there to millions.
|
| If you take control of the process during the call, and tell them
| "no" if they give you BS, you can probably get a price.
| SavageBeast wrote:
| "Contact Us" Pricing == Highly Variable Pricing. I personally see
| it as them inviting me to hear them out then waste some of their
| time before making a deal more along the lines of my price
| guidelines. Im about 50% success rate id say.
|
| End of month reports are always a good time, End of quarter even
| better, Triple witching week is the best. Sometimes you get lucky
| and some middle-manager-muckity-muck is only $X thousands from
| the bonus target... and thats when you find your deals. Start
| early and be prepared to wait.
| bunabhucan wrote:
| I know an electric utility that had senior folks work on the
| last day of the financial year to extract these bargains from
| desperate licensing vendors.
| Test0129 wrote:
| You likely won't get pricing information out of a company like
| this. It's safe to assume "Contact Us" is being used as shorthand
| for a price between expensive and absurdly expensive. Usually
| companies that do this offer some sort per-company rate based on
| what you need along with a bunch of additional services.
|
| Hate to say it but you're basically only going to find out by
| going through the sales funnel. Some of them may even turn you
| down for simply saying "we're evaluating X and would like to know
| the price".
| scrapcode wrote:
| This will normally depend on many factors. This is usually going
| to be the quantity of units and the level and availability of
| support, but could include other factors depending on the domain.
| Your initial "subscription" is generally going to be more than
| your renewal, sometimes way more.
|
| If it is a COTS offering that is likely to be used in the US
| Govt, I recommend trying to find your product on GSA Advantage
| [0], but it is helpful to have the manufacturer's part number
| handy, which often takes a consultation with a sales entity. Good
| luck!
|
| [0] https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/
| chrisdbanks wrote:
| Some companies make you sign an NDA before they tell you their
| prices.
| vehemenz wrote:
| I've had success asking other clients what they pay, assuming
| they're not a direct competitor of yours. This is easiest at
| conferences and professional events.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| As you already know, this is typical for "enterprise" software
| due to the idea that potential customers will immediately click
| away if the price seems too high, so you need to let your
| customer know what value is in your software before they
| immediately walk away.
|
| One take-away from this is the old "if you have to ask, you can't
| afford it", and another is that they're automatically filtering
| out lower-value or price-sensitive customers.
|
| However, an obvious counterpoint is that Atlassian built a multi-
| billion-dollar business around up-front pricing, and even seem to
| still offer that up-front pricing today.
|
| As a general rule, any software which requires "contact us" is
| going to be somewhere between $50k and $750k, generally annually,
| (usually for a fully-loaded site license on the high end), but
| there are definitely exceptions above and below. Certainly there
| are companies in some industries (WorkDay, Oracle, SalesForce,
| etc) that are known for being extremely expensive, and there are
| certainly many companies that would like to get into an upper
| tier but just aren't quite there yet, and smaller startups (esp
| non-VC funded) are often on the low end.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > One take-away from this is the old "if you have to ask, you
| can't afford it", and another is that they're automatically
| filtering out lower-value or price-sensitive customers.
|
| I have stopped government buying processes (yep, plural)
| because the price isn't available and they weren't priority
| enough to spend months on price research. With some companies,
| it is a larger time waster than the entire documenting the
| requirements, publishing it, answering questions, and watching
| the auction.
| malfist wrote:
| Counterpoint: https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/
|
| SpaceX publicly lists all their prices. If they can list a
| price tag for a falcon heavy it $97m on their website, these
| crappy SaaS vendors can list their prices too.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| The keyword here is _estimated_. That's only a ballpark
| number. I think they did that because they were severely
| undercutting the competition and they want people who
| wouldn't have thought about it to call their sales team. It's
| not the final price.
| clnq wrote:
| Estimated is fantastic. That's almost all I need before
| deciding who to buy practically identical SaaS from.
| mc32 wrote:
| In an odd twist, We've had calls where the provider's questions
| almost asked we prove we should onboard their solution. I guess
| there are people who try to onboard a wrong solution and then
| bad-mouth a provider as not solving their need, but I think
| that could be "solved" with trials --that most of these
| solutions provide anyway.
| rco8786 wrote:
| > due to the idea that potential customers will immediately
| click away if the price seems too high
|
| That's not how I read these at all. "Contact Us" means the
| company doesn't have set pricing but rather will have a sales
| person/department that will structure a specific deal and
| negotiate a contract for your business's specific needs.
| autoexec wrote:
| I read it as: the company doesn't have set pricing but rather
| has a sales person/department that will charge you more than
| the next person for the exact same product/service if they
| have any reason to suspect they can get away with it after
| learning as much as they can about your finances and only
| after wasting your time on a high pressure sales pitch.
|
| If someone refuses to openly list prices they're either:
| - Embarrassed by the amount of money they're charging
| - Aware they charge more than others and don't want to let
| you comparison shop easily - Planning on setting
| as high a price as possible depending on how much you can be
| fleeced into paying
| kube-system wrote:
| Enterprise SaaS customers are notorious for demanding one-
| off features, special packages, customizations, or hundreds
| of hours of meetings. For complicated enterprise products
| where these requests are inevitable, special pricing is
| inevitable.
|
| There's a large and very lucrative industry around just
| implementing SaaS software.
| autoexec wrote:
| You're right that for purely custom solutions it's
| understandable, but a base price could often be made
| public for a lot of products and services that don't
| offer one. Certainly anyone asking for something special
| expects to have to negotiate on what that's going to cost
| them above the standard price.
| kube-system wrote:
| It really depends on the nature of the software and the
| target customer as to whether that makes sense. The
| spectrum of what "SaaS" is, is just so insanely broad
| that it's hard to make any sweeping statement here.
| PeterisP wrote:
| A base price can only be made public if there exists a
| base price that would be common among customers - however
| if it's not priced as a commodity, that's not the case,
| there is zero expectation that there should be "the same
| service" available for the same price, or that there is
| some base price from which discounts are negotiated or
| something like that. They want to preserve the ability to
| have wildly different pricing for different customers,
| and publishing (or even having internally published) some
| fixed base price works against that.
|
| If they want to sell their services as custom services,
| that's the business model - and in this case, they want
| to make a clear point from the very beginning that this
| is not a commodity and every deal is a bespoke deal. Even
| if the technical platform is the same, every business
| relationship is custom and individually negotiated, with
| zero expectation that the price you get is in any way
| related to the prices someone else gets - sometimes that
| works against you, sometimes that works for you, but
| that's the business model they've chosen.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > There's a large and very lucrative industry around just
| implementing SaaS software.
|
| The last decade of my career has been multi-million
| dollar project after project of just setting up and
| customizing enterprise SaaS software for a customer's
| specific need.
| Thespian2 wrote:
| We may not like it, but your last point is almost the exact
| definition of what a "price" is. Things don't have
| objective "prices" as an intrinsic quality. They don't even
| have "reasonable" prices intrinsically. A price is no more,
| and no less than an agreement between buyer and seller to
| make a transaction happen.
|
| "how much you can be fleeced into paying" while a proactive
| way to phrase it, is also "What you are willing to pay."
| Key words - "you are willing". If it's too high, then it
| isn't a price, as there is no agreement.
|
| Seller wants highest price, and buyer wants lowest.
|
| When it's a commodity, like apples at the store, with many
| sellers of a basically undifferentiated product, prices
| average out to something we think of as "fair." But when a
| product is unique, or there is a monopoly on it, seller has
| a huge advantage in pricing.
| Xaena wrote:
| Having worked on pricing strategy, this is not what I've seen
| as the norm in B2B. If you're talking to an early company
| that is still working on product market fit, maybe, and
| definitely if you ask for your own features.
|
| If you're talking to larger companies, thing FAANG, then they
| have a list price and discount levels that can act as
| incentives, levers or there are other options for inducement.
| Otherwise, you give the sales team the authority on go-to-
| market strategy while they are executing individual deals
| (tactics). Senior sales leaders can authorize some of those
| discounts and any special inducements or incentives have to
| be custom written into contracts by legal + deal desk, making
| them more time intensive and less desirable.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| I'm interested in this level of pricing. What are the
| breakpoints typically? Per-user, $-per-(record|gb|request),
| then 'do what you want site wide', is there any other aspects
| other than support / consulting times, etc?
| imagine99 wrote:
| > As a general rule, any software which requires "contact us"
| is going to be somewhere between $50k and $750k
|
| I really _wish_ that were the case. Alas, more and more sellers
| think it makes them look cool and enterprise-y if they go the
| "contact us" route. Possibly the most ridiculous I encountered
| was a browser plugin startup offering that ended up costing
| something like $2/month/user with a 20 user minimum but even
| during the demo they were all about "Fortune 500 this and
| national ISPs that".
|
| As far as actual very large enterprises are concerned (pardon
| the pun), there might even be some truth to that: I know
| procurement guys who would only buy if they got the white-
| glove/wine-and-dine treatment and would have never bought
| something with a corporate credit card on a website that said
| "click to buy 35,000 licenses now" (you can do that with
| Atlassian IIRC).
|
| Fair enough.
|
| But for 99% of companies (i.e. SMB) it's just annoying to the
| extreme, especially if you have to do this more than once per
| year because your org is restructuring, your CTO is actually
| the CFO and reads marketing whitepapers and case studies to
| follow the latest tech fads, or you're in consulting.
|
| I say, offer both: An SMB plan with listed pricing (segment
| further at your leisure) and an Enterprise option with "call
| us". If you don't want SMB business, be honest about it and say
| "enterprise only, we only do bespoke, don't call if your budget
| is <50k".
| reaperducer wrote:
| _it 's just annoying to the extreme_
|
| I once had to find software options for a company I worked
| for. I had a deadline to meet for that, plus my regular
| duties.
|
| That meant that any company that had "Call for pricing"
| didn't make the cut. I don't have time for that.
|
| We ended up spending $120,000 on the solution I chose. I
| don't know if we could have gotten a better deal from another
| vendor, because they wanted to play games. I don't have time
| for games.
|
| The company that was honest and up-front about the pricing
| got the contract, which I know has renewed several times
| since then.
| grumple wrote:
| For the average SaaS I suspect this hurts sales. As someone who
| often gets to choose what services we pay for, any service
| where I have to send an email, or worse, involve our finance or
| accounts payable department and get non-technical people
| involved at the very start, it's a huge disincentive.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Having worked for an "enterprise" software biz, this is often
| because different customers can pay wildly different prices for
| the same software licenses. Often tailored less based on volume
| discounts or license type, and more around a customer's ability
| to pay.
| kube-system wrote:
| And also based upon how much of a PITA the customer is. Sales
| cycles, compliance documentation, configuration, training,
| support, etc, can really vary between customers.
| yellowapple wrote:
| I mentioned this in a different HN thread today, but I'm gonna
| say it again anyway: if I can get a publicly-available
| "standard" price for _launching something into outer fucking
| space_ 1, it's absolutely ridiculous that I can't get the same
| for something multiple orders of magnitude cheaper. Will that
| "standard" price be negotiated? Sure. Whatever. Just throw out
| _some_ number instead of forcing the buyer and seller to
| mutually waste each other 's time on basic information
| gathering.
|
| ----
|
| 1: https://www.spacex.com/media/Capabilities&Services.pdf
| bachmeier wrote:
| > One take-away from this is the old "if you have to ask, you
| can't afford it", and another is that they're automatically
| filtering out lower-value or price-sensitive customers.
|
| I don't understand this viewpoint (which I've seen numerous
| times). If that's all it is, you can scare those customers away
| by posting a price, as opposed to having some of them call and
| hang up on your salesperson when they get a quote.
| wwkeyboard wrote:
| That's a much more generous take than I had. I always assumed
| "contact us" pricing meant "tell us who you work for so we can
| google their funding level before suggesting a price to you".
| Bilal_io wrote:
| I am sure that's the correct assumption for some companies. I
| don't think it's right regardless how big the customer. But
| there are always exceptions, the size of your customer's
| business may affect your effort for onboarding and continues
| support, and therefore you may charge them different.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Price discrimination is good actually. Why shouldn't you
| charge the fortune 500 company more than the cash strapped
| start up? Good for your business, and lets you sell to the
| startup for less and still have the same revenue.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| That's definitely true... I mainly service financial
| institutions and their asset size is part of the calculation.
| indymike wrote:
| As a reformed former VP of Sales, I can assure that this is
| exactly how it works, except with much better research than
| Google.
| tevon wrote:
| This is real too. Prices are never fixed, was one of the
| first things I learned form my GSBer cofounder. In the
| "regular" world, the price is usually the price. In the
| business world it almost never is
| cj wrote:
| Whether or not your company has a procurement department
| should always be part of the equation when pricing enterprise
| deals. (Funding is an indicator of whether your company has
| one)
|
| Smaller companies without procurement departments are quicker
| and faster to contract with and they pay on time. Bigger
| companies with procurement departments request last minute
| contract redlines and never pay on time (always at least 2
| weeks late, as a rule of thumb).
|
| "Contact us" pricing might benefit you if you are smaller. If
| you're at a bigger company, the headache of dealing with your
| procurement department will inevitably (and justifiably)
| drive up the price - it's the bureaucracy tax.
| jedberg wrote:
| > always at least 2 weeks late, as a rule of thumb
|
| Oh man! As consultant I hated that. They would pay 90 days
| late and just say "sorry, we always pay 90 days after we
| get the invoice". They know I don't have the resources to
| sue them, nor would I. And they really had no reason to
| hold it other than making sure they get the interest
| instead of me.
|
| Sure maybe it takes a few days to validate the invoice, but
| 90 days was ridiculous.
|
| Even worse was when I was on the corporate side. I was
| working with a small vendor and our company had a 90 day
| wait as policy, but the company refused to deliver the
| items until they got the money. I really needed the items,
| so I have to move mountains to get our procurement to cut a
| check ASAP.
| chasd00 wrote:
| if the contract your client signed said net-30 then
| wouldn't a 90 day payment incur 60 days of late fees and
| another invoice? i feel like you could rinse/repeat that
| forever. It would be like a subscription to late fees.
| jedberg wrote:
| They usually just reject the invoice with late fees and
| quote their stated 90 day policy. Also usually they will
| redline it if you try to put net-30 and just change it to
| net-90 anyway.
| kube-system wrote:
| If a customer is paying you late because they think you
| won't/can't do anything about it, it seems the same
| disregard could apply to their payment of late fees.
| yellowapple wrote:
| You'd think "suspend service until outstanding invoices
| are paid in full" would be in the "things which you
| would/can do about it" category.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Sometimes, they'll go as far as stiffing your payment
| just because.. what are you going to due, sue a Global
| 100 entity?
|
| It's absurd, that's why I like working with smaller
| companies.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| I mean they will pay them if you escalate to legal but
| you won't be able to do business with them again.
| cj wrote:
| Technically, yes. But in practice, it's rarely worth the
| time or effort to collect.
| shrubble wrote:
| Most companies pay very quickly if you offer 1% Net 10 or
| 2% Net 10 terms. Paying within 10 days to get a 2% discount
| is pretty money-efficient from their standpoint.
| cykod wrote:
| So that's what I used to think (Price hiding to avoid sticker
| shock) But now I am convinced it's a little bit the price point
| but more when there is variability in the pricing, and the
| pricing is done by a sales team that has flexibility on what
| they charge you (these companies always will ask for a budget
| and tailor the quote to what they can squeeze)
|
| I take it as a sign that when they do give you a quote, it's up
| for negotiation and you should never agree to the first number
| presented.
| scrollaway wrote:
| There is variability but in my experience it's good
| variability, not bad. Every time I've gotten "contact us"
| pricing I have been presented with a slide deck "this is what
| we usually charge for companies with your needs", and the
| sales call was to allow me a chance to negotiate the price
| down (or eg lock in a multi year contract for cheaper.
|
| But this is nonsensical optimisation imo. At these price
| points, the ability to negotiate should be evident to anyone
| who has bought such products before.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >However, an obvious counterpoint is that Atlassian built a
| multi-billion-dollar business around up-front pricing, and even
| seem to still offer that up-front pricing today.
|
| Not quite .. their "Enterprise" package only has a "Contact us"
| option (no pricing details).
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > As you already know, this is typical for "enterprise"
| software due to the idea that potential customers will
| immediately click away if the price seems too high, so you need
| to let your customer know what value is in your software before
| they immediately walk away.
|
| That's one way of seeing it which is not necessarily generous.
|
| Another is "You and us both know there is no one size fit all
| standard solution here so we can't give you an off the rack
| price. Call us so we can take your measure and we will start
| talking about how this bespoke thing might cost."
| maccard wrote:
| > As a general rule, any software which requires "contact us"
| is going to be somewhere between $50k and $750k, generally
| annually, (usually for a fully-loaded site license on the high
| end)
|
| I'm working at a VC funded startup and fielding calls with
| "contact us" pricing, and while I've certainly seen some of
| those numbers floated, I saw just as many reasonably priced
| options that wanted to get on a sales call to try and
| upsell/make the case for going with them.
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Where is this general rule of $50k-$750k established? I think
| there are tons of saas products that target enterprises that
| are as low as ~$2k/month and up and require "contact us".
| bilekas wrote:
| Yeah maybe I'm a bit more cynical than you but the idea of
| contact us pricing for me has always been "dependa how much
| money you have and how much we can squeeze" also the idea of
| guaging how "critical" the service is for you.
|
| It seems so sleezy in the way that sales generally gets a bad
| reputation.
|
| There shouldn't be any problem with having the pricing on the
| site if it's all above board. That way you're actually reducing
| the wasted hours of sales people who have to determine if
| you're even a potential customer.
| mozman wrote:
| Vendor list pricing is absurd. Real story but using made up
| numbers below:
|
| I spoke with a vendor last week who came in at 500k. I told
| them my budget was 250k, price came back at 255k.
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| Then your renewal comes up and you've already spent another
| million in salaries and bespoke shit to make it work for
| you and the sales guy hits you with 500k again because
| you're in too deep.
| to11mtm wrote:
| Bingo
| stevage wrote:
| I mean that's how I would price it too.
| Jayab wrote:
| Because the service costs them $40k. I've seen this in the
| physical world with markups like this in captured
| industrial markets.
| Spivak wrote:
| No it doesn't this makes zero sense. $40k is way too much
| for operational costs and way too little for human costs.
|
| If you only count operational costs and a hypothetical
| skeleton crew to maintain it it probably costs damn near
| nothing to add another customer.
|
| But once you include the salaries of 20 to 2000 engineers
| and the rest of the business to support them it's a whole
| different ballgame. A major feature that takes one team 6
| weeks to build costs a little less than half a mil in
| engineer salaries.
|
| Software by its nature is weighted heavily in upfront
| costs and so pricing is "how little can we afford to
| charge to be in the black with ARR, how much do our
| competitors charge, and how much would it cost you to
| build it yourself."
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Because they'd rather get $500K, but getting $255K is
| better than getting $0K.
| lazide wrote:
| Those sales people do 'squeeze' out a lot of $$$, and it's
| also how they often get competitive and product intelligence.
| What other products is the person using, what
| expectations/requirements do they have that we might or might
| not be meeting, etc.
| brookst wrote:
| Depends on the product. If it's off-the-shelf and every
| customer just does DIY deployment, 100% agree.
|
| But many of these products have lots of different modules,
| and customers don't always know which ones they need. And
| some nearly require assistance/consulting with deployment,
| the complexity of which varies depending on environment.
|
| So from the company's point of view, they don't want to put
| "$200k" on the website if the actual price is between $100k
| and $1m depending on customer specifics. It will scare off
| smaller customers and upset bigger customers.
|
| But yeah if it's just one-size-fits-all, download-and-install
| SW, pricing should be listed.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Or, if you're dealing with a startup, there's a chance _the
| product doesn 't actually exist_ and they'll want to lock
| you in a deal that gives them more concrete requirements
| and funds the MVP. This is based on a bet that programmers
| can crank out code faster than the enterprise customer can
| finalize the deal.
|
| In the past, I've dealt with a startup that not only did
| just that, but also used the non-final deal with one very
| large customer to try and get similar deals started with
| several other large companies, with half the pitch being
| just "we're about to deploy our solution at ${very large
| and well-known international you've heard of}".
| Spivak wrote:
| It has never ever been a bad strategy to get paid to
| build a product rather than building something and hoping
| there's a market.
|
| This is the way to do enterprise sales.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Right. My point is more about misleading presentation.
| The landing page will try to convince you the company is
| offering an amazing product that will solve your
| problems, when the reality is, the product doesn't exist
| and the company is trying to get you to fund it.
| bilekas wrote:
| It's funny you bring this up because a startup i was
| involved in at the beginning did something similar. I was
| one of the seniors and we would have proposed "ideas" for
| what _could_ be done with the product. The next day the
| sales people were selling those features .. unfortunately
| it created a huge divide between sales and development
| that ultimately couldn 't be overcome.
|
| I understand the insentive is to sell, but there has to
| be a balancing line between sales and development, both
| can't work solely independent.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Don't forget that "contact us" pricing also gives vendor
| managers something to do, and the ability to brag about
| whatever discount they negotiate (and it hardly matters if
| _everyone_ gets that "discount").
|
| It's also the case that if something goes wrong the first
| question is often "do we have a contact at X?" and if you've
| gone through the "contact us" pricing dance, the answer is
| probably "yes", or at least "maybe', while if you use self-
| serve public-pricing plans, the answer is probably "no".
| Managers like having a named person to bug about problems, so
| the vendor manager gets to look more competent if they have
| one, even if the outcome's the same as if they didn't.
|
| Besides, _all_ pricing is "contact us" for enterprises. They
| don't pay what's on the sticker, even if there is one.
| autoexec wrote:
| > It's also the case that if something goes wrong the first
| question is often "do we have a contact at X?" and if you've
| gone through the "contact us" pricing dance, the answer is
| probably "yes"
|
| If you pay for a product or service and when something goes
| wrong your only contact is some jerk in sales that means you
| fucked up bad. Support options and contacts should have been
| determined and documented long before you spend a single
| cent.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| You usually end up introduced to one or more highish-level
| support and/or integration engineers as part of the sales
| process. If their sales folks don't volunteer to drag one
| or more into the conversation, they probably will if you
| ask.
| twawaaay wrote:
| There are also companies that do not really have a price list,
| they will just think up the price depending on what they think
| you are willing to pay.
| vasco wrote:
| Most of the times you can get rough pricing from them before
| taking a call if you describe your needs / number of seats, or at
| most a 20min call. Just make it clear you have many vendors to
| assess in a first pass and the more calls the less likely you are
| to subscribe in your opening contact.
|
| I'd also recommend only engaging with the top 3 better products
| before you go through such a big list.
| awb wrote:
| From someone who's done a lot of sales, I agree with this. If
| they dodge the question, asking something direct like: "how
| many figures are we talking about, 5, 6, 7?" can help.
|
| Most of the time sales folks don't want to quote you a ballpark
| right off the bat because they know that you'll be expecting
| something like that number on the final proposal.
|
| If they dodge giving you a price range then try approaching
| from a different angle, asking what's the smallest
| implementation they've done (tell them it's to make sure you're
| not too small a project for them). Then ask them about their
| biggest client (they might start chatting your ear off so be
| ready to cut them off). Then ask them directly what they would
| charge for those exact same implementations.
|
| You'll end up with a huge 10k foot view, but you might be able
| to get that in a few days, then you can drill down into a few
| of the more suitable vendors.
| timhigins wrote:
| capiche.com has some good pricing data and reviews from
| knowledgeable users.
| skmurphy wrote:
| The premise of your assignment is that the specifics of a
| customer situation don't affect price. For enterprise SaaS this
| is not the case. There is no "price list" there is structured
| negotiation that has many parameters, including:
|
| Total likely value of the business relationship if solution
| widely adopted inside prospect
|
| What options does winning this deal create? In particular what
| will the vendor learn and will this relationship open the door to
| new niches, segments, markets?
|
| What is the value of a reference / testimonial from this
| particular prospect?
|
| Two related blog posts for startups who need to manage an
| enterprise sales process:
|
| https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/11/12/negotiate-the-level...
|
| https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2013/02/16/price-based-on-your...
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Just email them :)
|
| Its easy to tell them in the email to not call you back. Plus you
| can instruct them to include a specific word in their reply
| subject line so that you can quickly filter to see who read your
| instructions and who didn't. It's a bit like that concert M&M
| check.
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| > concert M&M check
|
| For anyone that does not immediately recognize it refers to a
| popular trope that Van Halen contractually required venues to
| always sort M&Ms to not have brown ones. It is said this was
| their canary (in the coal mine) that was supposed to indicate
| if the venue took obligations seriously and hence will the
| concert be safe and up to standards.
|
| This has a mixed review on snopes.com so take it with a grain
| of salt but it's a nice idea: https://www.snopes.com/fact-
| check/brown-out/
| johngalt wrote:
| There isn't a hidden price that is only shown in the sales
| funnel. But rather the price changes depending on the customer.
|
| 'Contact us' = 'give us enough information to accurately price
| the product for you.'
|
| Best way to shortcut the process would be to work with a
| channel/var that has a majority of the items in their portfolio.
| chosen1x wrote:
| This is the answer that should top the list.
|
| Instead of talking to the individual companies doing this
| practice directly engage a Value Added Reseller (VAR) large
| enough to work with most of the people on your list. Their
| (VAR) scale will let you get list price or typically some
| degree better and they can assist with the comparisons to pick
| the product and partner that fits your company needs. Keep in
| mind that there is essentially zero chance that you are the
| first person to ask many of the questions that you want answers
| to and a VAR is in a position to service you no matter which
| product you choose. All of this should help align you to the
| right fit.
|
| Best of luck.
| focusedone wrote:
| Contact us == Prepare for daily emails until you block our domain
| syvolt wrote:
| I tried looking for something like this but ended up doing over a
| month of sales calls and meetings.
|
| One problem is probably that a lot of companies pull enterprise
| pricing out of their ass (or there's too many confounding factors
| that make it look like that), and the other big problem was
| already mentioned, they're trying to maximize your spending.
| brk wrote:
| It really depends heavily on the products and industries or
| verticals they serve. Also, it may depend on their exact GTM
| strategy, companies that sell primarily through a VAR type of
| channel are usually more hesitant to disclose pricing, as some of
| their partners may wrap other services or functions around the
| offering.
|
| Pricing can also vary based on how turn-key the product it. An
| enterprise CRM, for example, can be really hard to get pricing
| for as you are likely going to spend more on the implementation
| at first than on the actual licenses. In those cases the solution
| is also somewhat like buying insurance, where the expectation is
| that you have some customized add-ons and things that are
| specific to your environment.
| anonymuscoward wrote:
| If your company is serious about buying that much software your
| best bet is something like vendr. It'll cost you, but you'll get
| answers to your pricing questions, and if you're buying, they'll
| negotiate discounts for you. no need to 'talk to sales'
| sokoloff wrote:
| I should make a bookmarklet that changes "call for pricing" to
| something like:
| window.location="https://www.google.com/search?q=" +
| window.location.host.split(".").slice(-2,-1) + "+vs";
| TheTaytay wrote:
| TL;DR: use a SaaS procurement vendor like TropicApp.io or Vendr.
|
| Long version: First, my heart goes out to you. I was in charge of
| a lot of SaaS procurement for a number of years, and even as our
| company grew and our ability to pay went up, the lack of pricing
| transparency only became more frustrating to me! It used to be:
| "if we have to ask, we can't afford it," but then it became, "we
| can likely afford it, but it would be nice to make sure we should
| even talk to this vendor or industry before sitting through long
| eye-rolling sales calls." (Or even worse, the 15 minute sales
| call with an intern to get you as a lead before you can talk to
| someone who knows anything.) but my blood pressure is rising, and
| I digress...
|
| To level the playing field, we recently signed up with one of the
| "SaaS procurement" companies that has made this MUCH more
| tolerable. We use TropicApp.io, and have been happy with them and
| how they do business. They help us find and negotiate purchases.
| Even before we buy something, we can ask them stuff like, "we
| need a tool to do X. What are people using these days, and what
| is ballpark pricing and pricing model for a tool like that?" They
| (and their competitors) charge a percentage of the money they
| save you. They can't help with smaller stuff (less than 5k per
| year), but are helpful with the rest. (Not affiliated with them
| or any competitors like Vendr.com - just happy that these
| companies exist now, and wish we'd found them sooner.)
| philip1209 wrote:
| There's some interesting data in the debt proceedings for the
| event startup Pollen:
|
| https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/the-scoop-pollen/
|
| Some snippets on their debts, which you cold normalize for their
| ~150 employees:
|
| - Monday.com: PS515k
|
| - AWS: PS105k
|
| - Airtable: PS7k
| celestialcheese wrote:
| Very interesting - although probably difficult to glean any
| kind of generalizable pricing data because some of those
| vendors could have let unpaid bills slide longer than others.
|
| Also, how is Monday.com owed PS515k on a company of 315
| employees? That's 1.5k/employee, so if it's an annual contract
| they didn't pay, that's $150/user/month?
|
| Seems _wild_ expensive. If that's accurate, no wonder
| Monday.com is able to spend so much on paid ads.
| [deleted]
| JangoSteve wrote:
| A lot of good feedback here. One additional thought I'd provide
| is that I wouldn't rule someone out based on a "Contact us for
| price" button. I'd click the button, let them know what you need,
| and then let them rule themselves out based on their responses.
| Sometimes they may give you a price directly in their response
| (or at least a ballpark), sometimes they may insist on a call.
| Take the call, but draw the line where you're comfortable (e.g.
| give me a ballpark after 30 minutes or I'm out - you can be more
| tactful in your wording).
|
| Think about it from the company's perspective. Let's imagine as a
| company, you do an experiment where you have one landing page
| that shows the pricing, and another landing page that says
| "contact us". Let's also imagine that your product is enough of
| an enterprise solution that no one ever buys it without talking
| to someone at some point during the evaluation process (even if
| the pricing is up front, it requires enough of an investment that
| the customer wants to be absolutely certain it will satisfy their
| needs both now and as they grow). Finally, let's imagine that you
| have 3 full-time sales people to handle the incoming
| communications at whatever step of the evaluation process.
|
| Now, if the outcome of this experiment is that the "contact us
| for pricing" results in 1/5th the incoming contacts, but those
| then convert twice the rate, you might choose the up-front
| pricing (2x conversion rate but on 20% of the leads means only
| 40% the sales compared to up-front pricing).
|
| However, what if the 5x incoming contacts is too many for your
| sales team of 3 to respond, causing the up-front pricing to
| result in fewer sales with more work? Then you might choose the
| "contact us for pricing".
|
| But what if it's so many more incoming contacts at a consistent
| enough conversion rate that you can justify adding a 4th and 5th
| sales person to realize those sales? Then you might choose the
| up-front pricing.
|
| But what if the up-front pricing pigeon-holes you into your
| beachhead market and makes it more difficult to expand vertically
| or horizontally, which could lead to a trail-off in the incoming
| contacts and sales? Then you might choose the "contact us for
| pricing".
|
| The point is, the one that makes the most sense for a company
| depends on a lot of variables, most of which would be opaque to
| an outside observer. Being able to tell the difference between a
| company that has "contact us for pricing" because it made sense
| for them, compared to one trying to exploit price discrimination
| (as described by some of the more cynical takes) is next to
| impossible without talking with them. Even in that scenario
| though, if they end up giving you a better product for a better
| price, then being willing to reach out to them could end up being
| a competitive advantage for your company over another which
| disqualified them on that basis.
| paxys wrote:
| I'd say if you don't want to spend a month in sales calls then
| don't work in procurement. There isn't really a short cut, that's
| what the job is.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'd imagine surveys here could be useful (to you and to other
| searchers). But I'm not sure how accurate they'd be. If they list
| the price that way, it's likely to be highly variable for each
| client, possibly even with different contract/support terms by
| client.
|
| But I feel your pain. Trying to compare preschool tuitions is a
| nightmare because they only want to tell you if you go for a
| visit.
| lazide wrote:
| It's also because they are trying to compete on experience,
| which you have to be there to see, and not just raw $$ price.
| If they have out the price for free, it would be even more of a
| race to the bottom.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| I use the "if you have to ask the price in order to check whether
| you can afford it or not, you can't afford it, so don't ask"
| strategy.
|
| The price-hiding tactic is a little rude: jewlery stores helped
| pioneer it, the idea being to get the customer hooked on the item
| before they think about price, and to imagine the largest number
| they might be okay with paying ahead of time, while
| simultaneously making them unsure whether it's too low or not.
|
| I don't like dealing with companies who do that sort of thing and
| I worry what other curve balls they have in store later on. So I
| opt out.
|
| The reason that you can use this on enterprise sales is that you
| are theoretically offering something that the enterprise needs,
| no matter how painful the process is -- and there are typically
| few competitors for them to turn to. Many of the competitors use
| the same tactic. Hence, we see it all over in that world.
| comboy wrote:
| Details like what you actually need are less important, but you
| would definitely need to enter how much your company is worth as
| an input, if such website existed.
|
| If you have enough options though, you can be upfront about it -
| hey I have a number of services to check, either you give me
| ballpark given this copypasta or I'm checking the other ones.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| This isn't for B2B - I've seen this a lot in daycares and high-
| end cars. Generally, it's a way to signal "if you have to ask,
| you can't afford it"
| fapi1974 wrote:
| G2.com has a lot of pricing for comparison. Not sure if it
| necessarily shares information not available on the vendor sites,
| though.
| tenarchits wrote:
| I have found https://sso.tax/ to be helpful.
| datalopers wrote:
| > I'd like to avoid spending the next month in sales calls.
|
| Just exclude them from your search. They're garbage software
| anyway.
| indymike wrote:
| Contact Us Pricing has different meanings based on company size:
|
| Newish Companies: they haven't been able to figure out how to
| price their product yet.
|
| Growth Companies: We're revenue optimizing every deal.
|
| "Sales Driven" (as opposed to "product driven): We have to
| justify the existence of our sales team.
|
| Hyper competitive companies: I'm not publishing a price because
| someone will scrape it and beat us by $1.
|
| Large Companies: Our pricing is a four-dimensional matrix with
| multiple elevators, and we need a team of people to figure out
| which spreadsheet and which tab to look up x and y to price your
| deal.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| No, the only comfort I can give you is that you also have to make
| deals with companies with list prices. Otherwise you end up
| paying too much.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| Unlikely you'll find any good source.
|
| "contact us" pricing revolves around understanding the customer's
| use case deeply enough so that you can demonstrate maximum
| product value to them and then extract the most possible money. I
| despise it.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'd love to have a way to scare salespeople straight by showing
| them how many sales they are losing because of this bad
| practice.
| lazide wrote:
| For the sales people, it rarely results in missed sales they
| care about. The ones who are super into this are almost
| always commission. If the company does less overall revenue
| (due to fewer overall sales), that is not a problem as long
| as _they_ get more overall revenue (commission) due to the
| sales they land being 'richer'. It's a pretty classic owner
| /agent issue.
|
| The company should care, probably, but there are also reasons
| for some companies to prefer high touch interactions - it
| gives huge insight from a product perspective, and can
| provide insights to tackle other verticals they might
| otherwise struggle to even know existed.
|
| Going in volume does make good numbers though, if you're
| setup in a way that you can keep it going. Toyota, Honda,
| etc. have very solid fleet and 'pay the flat rate and go'
| markets they serve.
| Jayab wrote:
| Again I can vouche for seeing this in the physical
| industrial world. Sales only care about landing big deals
| with big margins, couldn't care less about many, many small
| fish. They wine and dine big clients and then build summer
| homes in the local hot spots off those projects
| commissions.
| xmonkee wrote:
| I'll defend it because I'm doing it: We have a very very young
| company, and we are building our product with our customers. We
| are in fact charging very little right now with the
| understanding that our product is immature, and later we plan
| to increase pricing to get to a profitable level. There is
| absolutely no way to come up with any sort of standard pricing
| for us, since each customer means a lot of feature and customer
| support.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| It's a different question when you're in an MVP stage and for
| very different reasons.
|
| Without knowing literally anything about what you're doing, I
| would still suggest you try to put some price where you can't
| lose money on the site with a group/bulk/quantity discounts
| available button. Especially put the same button on all the
| pricing pages inside your UI/interface as well. When people
| think you're too expensive, you want to confront them with
| "hey, let's talk."
| supernova87a wrote:
| Sometimes I ask sales people of these companies, "why is it
| that SpaceX can give me a price for launching something into
| space, with detailed manuals about how to prepare all my
| interfaces, but you have to take 2 weeks to think about how
| much to charge me?"
|
| Yes I know the comparison isn't quite right, but sometimes you
| just have to put some pressure on bro salespeople coming in,
| making shit up, and trying to test how willing you are to pay
| for something they haven't even built yet, and pricing it to
| maximally extract value later. Otherwise they'll start to think
| it's reasonable.
| lazide wrote:
| Most of them do already think it's reasonable!
| paxys wrote:
| You cannot tell SpaceX to move up their launch date for you.
| You cannot send a payload that exceeds the weight or size
| limits. You cannot tell them that you don't like the color of
| the rocket since it doesn't fit with your brand. As far as
| sales go, it's easy for SpaceX to publish their prices
| because it's the most rigid type of service possible.
|
| Enterprise SaaS is the exact opposite. The product that is
| listed on the website is just a starting point. There are
| teams of sales reps, account managers, solutions architects
| and more who will customize it exactly to the customer's
| liking, and all that needs to be priced.
| chasd00 wrote:
| also if you screw up bad enough as a spacex customer and
| not meet their payload requirements after so many failed
| attempts then they refuse to ever do business with you
| again.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Exactly. This is the reason some smaller self-driving
| companies exist, even though Tesla has pretty much
| dominated the space. Tesla might have superior tech, but
| it's not for sale.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Why? Companies usually buy something to make more money with or
| avoid losses, either directly, or indirectly. If something
| costs 500k a year but helps make the company 10M, or prevent a
| 10M hack, that's a win-win in my book.
| yellowcayak wrote:
| I've worked for such a company. If asked for a "price list",
| they will ask an intern to create a customer-specific price
| list, based on nr. of users/nr. of transactions/nr. of
| whatever, that will certainly lead to the target price (based
| on optimistic estimation of product value).
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It'll be good for you to practice cutting these calls short so
| you can get your quote.
| codegeek wrote:
| Best option is to have both. Some fixed starting prices and then
| Custom/Enterprise/Contact us. That's what we do for my SAAS where
| we start at $599/Month (B2B) but our custom/contact us prices can
| go $50k/Year or even more. Some reasons are custom user count,
| custom features/integrations, tighter SLAs with dedicated
| Customer Success Manager (CSM) etc. Gotta charge for all those
| conveniences.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| > Is there a website or service that lists cost ranges for
| enterprise SaaS products?
|
| Probably not. Have had good success in the past posting random
| stuff on reddit, like "I'm paying 12000 / core for Oracle, am I
| high? Is this common?" in r/sysadmin, and then having people
| correct me.
|
| But for the most part SaaS ain't offer those prices online.
| Contact someone, set up time for a call, and get prices. This is
| why vendor managers, sales engineers, solution architects, etc.
| are a thing.
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| There are only three reasons: 1. To allow you to charge customers
| differently for the same product. 2. If you are offering a highly
| customized product. 3. To establish value for your product prior
| to providing pricing.
|
| In my experience, #1 is by far the most common for a SaaS.
|
| The rationale of "if you have to ask" falls apart because you
| could just put a high price on your site to filter out the
| cheapskates.
|
| I also find that when evaluating a new product, my first click on
| their site is the pricing page. It is a semi-standardized way to
| quickly see the significant features offered without all the
| verbose prose that you'll find on the product pages.
| benrapscallion wrote:
| Capiche.com
| jefc1111 wrote:
| I normally find discussions on Reddit for these kinds of things.
| Recently have had to research Acunetix, Snowflake and some others
| and have found interesting (if anecdotal) info on Reddit.
| bombcar wrote:
| If they have a "personal/business" tier that has a price, just
| use that multiplied by the number of seats/licenses. It's
| ballpark close enough _usually_.
| zainhoda wrote:
| That's what I would have ordinarily thought but I had a vendor
| who charged $10/user/mo per user for their "Team" tier but
| $180,000/year for their "Enterprise" tier with up to 150 users.
| Made no sense at all.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I tried to get SuSE to tell me how much Rancher was so I could
| just buy it. I was completely ready to just lay down my credit
| card. They refused without a sales call. And in fact, it was
| impossible for me to even _schedule_ a sales call without joining
| their Slack channel to tell them their website 's Contact Us form
| was broken. The call got bumped like 3 times over 2 months, they
| didn't schedule a new one. Now I've found out that Rancher's
| support sucks and SuSE is botching their communication, so I'm
| going with a competitor.
|
| SaaS people: Don't make it hard for me to give you money. At the
| _very least_ , give me a 30 day trial ( _of Enterprise features_
| ) while we go through your stupid sales dance.
| grantsch wrote:
| Companies do this so they can price discriminate for high margin
| goods and services
| ww520 wrote:
| "Contact Us" is called value pricing in enterprise lingo. It
| means the price will reflect how much "value" the product will
| provide to your organization. If the product can provide $100M
| "value" for your company, they will be happy to charge you $10M
| for the product. That's why they need to talk to you, to find out
| how much "value" they can provide for you.
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