I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

I read the article and after a few para's I know that the author now works for a SaaS expense management company and I am reading marketing material.

For people just starting, I can see it being true. A pedestrian example might be a Lambda. You look at the pricing on their site and calculate it down to the penny, but the cost ends up higher. Because the Lambda pricing page doesn't mention the Cloudwatch logs that were created with your Lambda, but they aren't free. (Leaving free tier stuff out of the picture).

Come on now, you have to know that's a gross exaggeration.

It's arguing that no deal between two parties is unethical as long as both parties are clearly aware of all aspects of the deal and their consequences and neither party is coerced into agreeing to the deal.

I still disagree with your premise. You’re saying that as long as the terms are clearly communicated they’re not a dark pattern, aka unethical.

I think if you’re using your superior understanding of the dynamics of using your product to create unreasonable gotcha situations that customers would not have agreed to if they had any choice then that’s dark patterns.

There are lots of examples but most revolve around lock-ins and ratchet type mechanics. Things like making it easy to create data but punitively expensive to get it out in order to switch products.

Things like making it easy to scale up the service but literally impossible to downsize also can qualify, which was the issue we were both referring to.

Or your example of a setup period could also qualify. Sure if it’s like super clear I guess so, but it’s pretty easy to see that often in that scenario people don’t realize the implications of the “onboarding period” and it’s a bit of a trick.

I’m speaking from personal experience this kind of trickery is rampant in trying to interact with many of these services. I got far into negotiations with a household name marketing platform and notice they never once mentioned the mandatory fees for onboarding. They also never said a word about outbound email limits and data limits etc. I knew only from stories from someone who had gone with them, gotten locked into a year of spending, and discovered in the first week that the service was literally unsuitable for them given their requirements. I was in a similar negotiation with them at the time and they were trying to trap me in a similar way.

Humans have a pretty intrinsic concept of fairness. There’s a cottage industry of SaaS companies that don’t care about that and many of us find it exhausting and not ethical. They use deceptive tactics with customers and anti-competitive tactics to acquire or eliminate competitors so you don’t have choices.

It’s a fucking crisis. Which is why this whole thread is raging with comments.

The problem is that you're not defining "dark pattern" reasonably.

"You’re saying that as long as the terms are clearly communicated they’re not a dark pattern, aka unethical."

You're saying that something being unethical makes it a dark pattern, and that's wrong. If I rob you at gunpoint, that's definitely unethical, but it's not a dark pattern.

"I think if you’re using your superior understanding of the dynamics of using your product to create unreasonable gotcha situations that customers would not have agreed to if they had any choice then that’s dark patterns."

Again, this is in no way relevant to the examples cited. Telling the customer that any seats they sign up for must be paid for a full year is not an unreasonably gotcha situation. It's a concept that's clearly explained, and one that won't be a surprise to anyone who has any experience purchasing SaaS products, because it's common industry practice.

As to the idea that they don't have a choice to agree, that's virtually never true with SaaS. It is an enormously competitive industry with multiple players in every major area. On top of that, if you're talking about tech companies buying SaaS products, they also have the option to build their own tools if they don't like the options that are available.

"Things like making it easy to create data but punitively expensive to get it out in order to switch products."

Again, this is true but in no way relevant to anything I've said. If it's clearly communicated that you're going to have to pay a million dollars to get your data out, it's a bad business practice but not a dark pattern.

You're applying the label "dark pattern" incorrectly to any SaaS practice you dislike. The phrase has a specific meaning, and any practice that is clearly and honestly communicated up front, even if it's a horrible practice, is not a dark pattern.