[HN Gopher] Show HN: We built PriceLevel to find out what compan...
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Show HN: We built PriceLevel to find out what companies pay for
SaaS
Hey HN! Christine and Steven here. As a PM and engineer, we've both
evaluated and purchased a lot of software. One of the biggest
frustrations was figuring out how much it would cost us without
having to go through the sales process. When we did have a quote,
we had no idea if we were getting a good deal or ripped off. We
built a site where you can see what other companies are actually
paying for SaaS and enterprise software. Buyers contribute prices
via quotes, pricing proposals, and other documentation to ensure
quality. We unlocked Talkdesk for Show HN users so that you can
use the product without needing to sign in or upgrade. Check it out
at https://www.pricelevel.com/showhn. Would love to hear any
feedback, thank you!
Author : cluo21
Score : 114 points
Date : 2024-04-09 15:04 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pricelevel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pricelevel.com)
| smcleod wrote:
| This is a great idea. Nice work!
| cluo21 wrote:
| Thank you!
| esafak wrote:
| I think you should fuzz the prices and other specifics like the
| number of seats a bit for privacy.
|
| For even more privacy you could show faceted aggregates with
| error bars instead of individual accounts once your samples are
| big enough.
| cluo21 wrote:
| That's a fair point. Just to make sure I understand, when you
| say fuzz - do you mean round up or down so it's a nice whole
| number?
| esafak wrote:
| I would show an interval that's within 5% or whatever, but
| use the same intervals for all accounts otherwise people can
| deduce the original number by calculating the midpoint :)
| cluo21 wrote:
| :thumbs-up:
| apimade wrote:
| Add region or locations immediately. Single biggest factor
| outside of customer size or how much product they're buying.
|
| Also contract length. Pretty common to get deep discounts with
| multi year agreements.
| myrloc wrote:
| Useful info. Might want to make the ordered quantity and
| contract length ranges though, re: fuzzing anything that might
| identify the client
| cluo21 wrote:
| Mm, yea - that's a buyer attribute we can add to clarify.
|
| And definitely! We do have contract length, though that's
| locked away as a Pro feature
| Scorpiion wrote:
| Looks like a nice service, it also sounds like something the SaaS
| companies who's pricing information you are showing would not
| like.
|
| I'm curious how you look at that? Are there any legal risks for
| end users to share this type of information via your site? I'm
| thinking if the SaaS providers have some legal statements about
| not sharing prices (similar to how certain database providers
| don't allow sharing of database benchmarks).
| cluo21 wrote:
| Buyer anonymity is mission critical for us and we've taken some
| steps to do that like generalizing company size and industry.
| There's been some great feedback in this thread (thanks
| everybody!) about additional fuzzing we can do to protect our
| buyers that we'll implement.
|
| While there may be some SaaS companies who don't like this
| level of transparency, we hope this actually leads to a faster
| sales cycle because buyers have pre-qualified themselves.
| lvspiff wrote:
| > we hope this actually leads to a faster sales cycle because
| buyers have pre-qualified themselves.
|
| But by obfuscating their pricing they are able to create a
| marketing "lead" when you contact them that will one day
| evolve into a client and therefor its better for them to
| "pre-qualify" you.
|
| I personally hate this model as it drives me absolutely
| insane to spend a month of going back and forth with a
| vendor, going over what i'd like to do and why, investing
| time in understanding their stack and product, only to find
| out its 2x my budget or something like they wont even
| consider me since its less than 10k. If you hide your
| pricing, make me go through an extensive process, and I let
| you know im trying to implement a PoC or a small entry level
| and you come at me with $1k/month I'm likely going to walk
| away and be frustrated enough to not want to do business with
| you ever. You've created more of a negative experience that i
| will tell others about than a "lead". Yet this goes against
| every companies thinking (even my won) so it must work on
| someone.
| anotherhue wrote:
| See also: https://ssotax.org/
| xtracto wrote:
| This is also a great site! I remember there was a similar one
| but for "open source" (heavy quotes) self-hosted software. I
| find those sooo shady. I also remember there was some Nginx
| proxy or similar that enabled SSO in several of those
| applications.
| aleks5678 wrote:
| How much does Vendr cost? Their own pricing is not transparent.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Love this! As a consumer, there's nothing like open pricing.
|
| However, as a provider I can totally see a situation where I
| (proverbially, I'm not in this business) sue you for disclosing
| what amounts to a trade secret (depending on what's in the fine
| print) and compel you to give up all documents so I can go after
| my loose-lipped client too.
|
| I hope you've got your legal bases covered
| uoaei wrote:
| Is there precedent that points in either direction that pricing
| details are considered a trade secret (or whatever the legally
| enforceable version of that is)?
| passwordoops wrote:
| I've signed and written quotes that have those provisions.
| What the legal standing is, I can't comment on because it
| never came to that.
|
| This is with the obvious caveat that public tenders are the
| exception, but only after it's awarded
| mickael-kerjean wrote:
| Loving this as well from the point of view of a small saas
| provider who has no idea what typical enterprise contract runs
| for.
| RowanH wrote:
| I can totally see some uninformed staff member contributing
| what they're paying for things, and landing their employer in
| deep, deep, trouble with their suppliers.
|
| I've found in competitive price analysis there's some companies
| that do very, very, well at hiding their pricing. If they've
| worked that hard, that long, to protect/hide pricing they're
| not going to take it lying down.
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| Pricing isn't a trade secret.
| a5seo wrote:
| Really great job. Whether it's legal for customers to share this
| info or not is really a gray area.
|
| If the data is only shared in an aggregate fashion, I doubt they
| can do much without a subpoena. And then what? Sue the website?
| Sorry, no. Section 230.
|
| John Doe suits against anonymous customers?
|
| Nothing requires PriceLevel to retain the PII of users... they
| can capture the data, validate, and flush the PII. "Sorry, we
| have no information about the contributor of this data."
|
| My sense is this will be the primary innovation of this service--
| how to get this info and keep it useful to end users without very
| much ability to vet it. Worth the effort.
| piterrro wrote:
| What is the incentive to contribute and how do you check the
| legitimacy of the numbers provided?
| esafak wrote:
| I imagine it plays into the pricing.
| cluo21 wrote:
| Contributing data is one method to gain full access to our
| pricing data set. Alternatively, users can also pay for access.
|
| Regarding quality, we're manually reviewing every data point
| for credibility before making it available.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| So simple but good.
|
| Now we need a similar thing that publishes database benchmarks in
| spite of DeWitt. Use a few standardized datasets and boom.
| a13n wrote:
| As a buyer, it's definitely nice to have more data on this.
| Pricing can be very opaque and sometimes I just want to know the
| ballpark to know if it's even worth exploring. Annoying to spend
| 30 minutes on a call to get that when you could have it in 2
| seconds.
|
| As an operator, I know a lot of SaaS agreements include language
| saying the customer will protect the vendor's confidential data
| including information about pricing. I doubt it's legal in the
| majority of the time for buyers to share this data. And if the
| buyer is sharing confidential data with you, you're likely taking
| on risk by sharing it publicly, even in aggregate form.
|
| You could add something saying that the buyer agrees that they
| have the legal rights to share the information with you, to
| protect yourself. But at some point you should know that the
| majority of the time, even if that box is checked, they don't.
| amelius wrote:
| The buyer is already sharing that information with their bank,
| so the confidentiality is already broken :)
| orliesaurus wrote:
| This is COOL! Finally some transparency honestly it was much
| needed
| ziziyO wrote:
| Submitting fake overpriced quotes for my competitor's products
| techcofounder wrote:
| this is cool! but how is it diff than vendr?
| batch12 wrote:
| It's spelled correctly
| aleks5678 wrote:
| How much does Vendr cost? Their own pricing is not transparent.
| hdaz0017 wrote:
| I am not sure where the information was gained, but I believe
| this is only a fraction of the overall costs for an organisation.
| (probably limited number of account(s)).
| cdchn wrote:
| Thought this was a great idea until I saw you had to create an
| account to see details. Seems pretty antithetical to the entire
| premise.
| RileyJames wrote:
| Great idea, great site. I signed up. But post-sign up on the
| modal explaining how it works I was unable to scroll below
| "Upgrade", in order to reach the continue button.
|
| iPhone SE2.
|
| Keen to use this. Having just been through the dance to obtain
| Drata, I'd love to just know the price ahead of time.
|
| I know there was a YC company many years ago that "negotiated
| saas pricing as a service".
|
| The pain is not just knowing the price, it's also: - what
| features and versions of features are included in why I'm paying
| for??
|
| - what is the value of the extra bs that's being packaged in, and
| can I negotiate it away? Or how can I make use of it?
|
| I feels there's a lot of value in a community of recent buyers of
| a product being able to communicate openly. Any company that
| takes actions against their own customers for trying to make the
| most of their product should be replaced.
| cluo21 wrote:
| Oof, thank you for telling us about the modal and the iphone
| model - we're on it.
| j45 wrote:
| Great idea, congrats on the launch - valuable to learn where
| pricing deals end.
|
| SaaS sales can be guilty of drive-by sales, where the
| implementation fails to reach promises.
|
| It puts a black eye too often on good products.
| guidedlight wrote:
| Good idea. It needs to be clearly global though.
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