The new breed of SaaS providers seem to be providing pretty good transparency in pricing. Most, if not all, provide pricing directly on their pricing pages. The only difference might be in bulk or large users pricing, but mostly pricing in those SaaS spaces seems transparent.
I think there is MUCH better opportunity in the Enterprise Software space, where margins are ridiculously high, and shady sales tactics are super prevalent. Read: Oracle, IBM, etc. There might also be opportunity to have anonymous users share sales and execution related dirt on Enterprise Software - such as non-performance, technical and security problems, and of course pricing. For instance, try going to IBM or Oracle's Web sites to purchase a "license" for any of their software products. Almost always you'll be directed to contact a sales representative.
One wrinkle in your process is going to be navigating non-disclosure agreements.
The testimonials they already have on there are from Sendgrid, Twillio, Mixpanel, Asana; all of these companies are "transparent" in their up-front pricing, but you can sure as hell call them up and get a discount, and that's the frustrating bit that they're trying to solve.
Whats to solve though? You just phone them up, or email them in my experience. I think at least 3/4 cases when I drop some company an email I get a startup discount. Even if they weren't on this list, I'd still try my luck.
Not associated with Capiche FYI, but how much would you pay for someone to call all of your SaaS providers and negotiate discounts based on the information Capiche obtains (or find similar SaaS tools to what you're using who will negotiate if someone you're using won't)? Possible monetization strategy for them, especially if they can automate a lot of the email workflow for doing so.
Capiche team member here. Agreed—but there is a trend towards increasingly obscured pricing as apps go upmarket, at least with adding “enterprise” plans with undisclosed pricing as the top tier, even with Slack and other newer, better apps. Even apps with clear pricing can be confusing when they have metered components, as new users have no way to reasonably estimate their usage. We’re hoping both to push for clearer pricing and help users set expectations.
Are you worried about the size of your market then? Because organizations that would qualify for enterprise pricing plans for a lot of these SaaS providers are probably pretty limited - Capiche?
In all seriousness, a LOT of Enterprise Software Pricing negotiation (Oracle etc) literally comes down to "what can you afford to pay?" type activities from sales reps. Couple that with super shady maintenance contracts and renewal processes and it really begs for transparency. SMBs get killed every day by sales reps who literally live and die by the lack of transparency in the Enterprise Software Space.
Given, I've not been involved in many of these large contracts for a while. But every time I've dealt with one of these before, at a size you seem to be mentioning here, its been under NDA.
This is definitely true for the newest wave of SaaS, but the dirty secret is that pricing is almost always more flexible than you'd think. So far I've only come across two companies that seem to never bend their publicly listed pricing.
but if non-transparent pricing was such a problem, wouldn't those customers simply use a competing product that does have transparent pricing? how can non-transparent enterprise software companies continue to have customers if their customers really care about this issue?
Comments
The new breed of SaaS providers seem to be providing pretty good transparency in pricing. Most, if not all, provide pricing directly on their pricing pages. The only difference might be in bulk or large users pricing, but mostly pricing in those SaaS spaces seems transparent.
I think there is MUCH better opportunity in the Enterprise Software space, where margins are ridiculously high, and shady sales tactics are super prevalent. Read: Oracle, IBM, etc. There might also be opportunity to have anonymous users share sales and execution related dirt on Enterprise Software - such as non-performance, technical and security problems, and of course pricing. For instance, try going to IBM or Oracle's Web sites to purchase a "license" for any of their software products. Almost always you'll be directed to contact a sales representative.
One wrinkle in your process is going to be navigating non-disclosure agreements.
The testimonials they already have on there are from Sendgrid, Twillio, Mixpanel, Asana; all of these companies are "transparent" in their up-front pricing, but you can sure as hell call them up and get a discount, and that's the frustrating bit that they're trying to solve.
Whats to solve though? You just phone them up, or email them in my experience. I think at least 3/4 cases when I drop some company an email I get a startup discount. Even if they weren't on this list, I'd still try my luck.
Not associated with Capiche FYI, but how much would you pay for someone to call all of your SaaS providers and negotiate discounts based on the information Capiche obtains (or find similar SaaS tools to what you're using who will negotiate if someone you're using won't)? Possible monetization strategy for them, especially if they can automate a lot of the email workflow for doing so.
Capiche team member here. Agreed—but there is a trend towards increasingly obscured pricing as apps go upmarket, at least with adding “enterprise” plans with undisclosed pricing as the top tier, even with Slack and other newer, better apps. Even apps with clear pricing can be confusing when they have metered components, as new users have no way to reasonably estimate their usage. We’re hoping both to push for clearer pricing and help users set expectations.
Are you worried about the size of your market then? Because organizations that would qualify for enterprise pricing plans for a lot of these SaaS providers are probably pretty limited - Capiche?
In all seriousness, a LOT of Enterprise Software Pricing negotiation (Oracle etc) literally comes down to "what can you afford to pay?" type activities from sales reps. Couple that with super shady maintenance contracts and renewal processes and it really begs for transparency. SMBs get killed every day by sales reps who literally live and die by the lack of transparency in the Enterprise Software Space.
Given, I've not been involved in many of these large contracts for a while. But every time I've dealt with one of these before, at a size you seem to be mentioning here, its been under NDA.
This is definitely true for the newest wave of SaaS, but the dirty secret is that pricing is almost always more flexible than you'd think. So far I've only come across two companies that seem to never bend their publicly listed pricing.
but if non-transparent pricing was such a problem, wouldn't those customers simply use a competing product that does have transparent pricing? how can non-transparent enterprise software companies continue to have customers if their customers really care about this issue?