by mrtomservo on 11/1/22, 6:35 PM with 168 comments
Is there a website or service that lists cost ranges for enterprise SaaS products?
Thanks in advance for your help!
by gunapologist99 on 11/1/22, 6:52 PM
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.
by skmurphy on 11/1/22, 6:53 PM
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...
by imagine99 on 11/1/22, 7:45 PM
(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.
by AdamJacobMuller on 11/1/22, 6:43 PM
"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.
by philip1209 on 11/1/22, 7:17 PM
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/the-scoop-pollen/
Some snippets on their debts, which you cold normalize for their ~150 employees:
- Monday.com: £515k
- AWS: £105k
- Airtable: £7k
by barbariangrunge on 11/1/22, 7:22 PM
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.
by johngalt on 11/1/22, 6:54 PM
'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.
by indymike on 11/1/22, 9:20 PM
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.
by Test0129 on 11/1/22, 7:11 PM
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".
by syvolt on 11/1/22, 6:54 PM
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.
by PaulWaldman on 11/1/22, 9:40 PM
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.
by tptacek on 11/1/22, 10:25 PM
by Multicomp on 11/1/22, 6:49 PM
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).
by ww520 on 11/1/22, 8:41 PM
by pclmulqdq on 11/1/22, 8:04 PM
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.
by giantg2 on 11/1/22, 6:42 PM
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.
by saasbuyer on 11/7/22, 2:14 PM
Companies flock to us to buy software because they are fed up with "Contact Sales", opaque pricing, expiring discounts, and the games associated with sales. Buyers of software are rapidly opting out of sellers' sales processes, coming to Vendr, and asking us to do it for them. Sales is broken.
Today, sellers focus on creating sales processes that maximize the leverage and outcomes for the sellers. This creates friction resulting in avg 90 days sales cycles and 20-25% close rates for sellers. Not good. No wonder sales and marketing expense equals ~50% of revenue.
When Vendr's successful, we'll have fixed sales. No more games. Fair pricing, correct and fast buying decisions -- powered by data. This results in a win for the seller (lower cost acquisition; shorter sales cycles) and a win for the buyer (best products win; fair pricing).
LMK if you need help with any of the "contact us" pricing -- we can easily answer this for you. ryan@vendr.com
by evilotto on 11/1/22, 7:10 PM
by smithcoin on 11/1/22, 7:44 PM
by scrapcode on 11/1/22, 6:51 PM
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!
by 1123581321 on 11/1/22, 7:04 PM
by SavageBeast on 11/1/22, 8:44 PM
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.
by blaser-waffle on 11/1/22, 10:00 PM
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.
by codegeek on 11/1/22, 7:23 PM
by vasco on 11/1/22, 6:53 PM
I'd also recommend only engaging with the top 3 better products before you go through such a big list.
by TheTaytay on 11/1/22, 8:30 PM
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.)
by fxtentacle on 11/1/22, 10:31 PM
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.
by 0xbadcafebee on 11/1/22, 8:20 PM
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.
by brk on 11/1/22, 6:54 PM
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.
by eb0la on 11/2/22, 8:31 AM
Worst experience was a reporting tool for telecoms that was licensed by port. Devices used to have 4-8 ports but the year before suddenly it was feasible to ship 32-port devices to customers. This made the tool prohibitive.
My best experience was when a sales rep just called and told me the pricing range for their product: 5x our budget, without counting cost of migration. It was the most productive sales call I ever had.
by dusted on 11/2/22, 8:27 AM
1. If you're not going to spend time jumping OUR hoopes to talk with us, you're not that important, we don't care about you, little fish.
2. We won't quote our price because we want human-human time with you to maximize our quote based on how dumb you are. (how hard can we scam you out of money).
There might be a place in the world for a site where existing customers can anonymously report how much they've been quoted for named services at named companies. It'd be very convenient.
by bombcar on 11/1/22, 7:07 PM
by throwayyy479087 on 11/1/22, 7:39 PM
by vehemenz on 11/1/22, 7:13 PM
by legitster on 11/1/22, 6:48 PM
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.
by comboy on 11/1/22, 7:03 PM
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.
by deepsun on 11/2/22, 9:49 PM
by anonymuscoward on 11/1/22, 9:32 PM
by NibLer on 11/2/22, 8:23 AM
by jefc1111 on 11/1/22, 8:00 PM
by paxys on 11/1/22, 8:15 PM
by startupsales on 11/1/22, 7:46 PM
by polishdude20 on 11/3/22, 7:02 PM
by AtNightWeCode on 11/1/22, 8:17 PM
by fapi1974 on 11/1/22, 9:20 PM
by evanwolf on 11/2/22, 9:32 PM
the hardest part is if their software required extensive integration and customization; that help would cost extra and the project would be largely it depends.
by tenarchits on 11/1/22, 9:39 PM
by Spooky23 on 11/2/22, 3:13 AM
by grantsch on 11/1/22, 7:26 PM
by timhigins on 11/1/22, 9:29 PM
by more_corn on 11/2/22, 2:23 AM
by chrisdbanks on 11/1/22, 6:51 PM
by sokoloff on 11/1/22, 6:56 PM
window.location="https://www.google.com/search?q=" + window.location.host.split(".").slice(-2,-1) + "+vs";
by focusedone on 11/1/22, 9:50 PM
by kazinator on 11/2/22, 1:11 AM
by datalopers on 11/1/22, 7:39 PM
Just exclude them from your search. They're garbage software anyway.
by benrapscallion on 11/1/22, 10:21 PM
by JangoSteve on 11/1/22, 7:37 PM
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.