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.
Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing
41–50 of 173 posts
Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing
#42I'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.
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.
Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing
#43Companies do this so they can price discriminate for high margin goods and services
Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing
#44As 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-…
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.
Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing
#45As 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-…
> 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.
Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 re…
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.
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.
Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 re…
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 i…
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}".
Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 re…
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.
Because the service costs them $40k. I've seen this in the physical world with markups like this in captured industrial markets.
Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing
#49As 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-…
> 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.
Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing
#50A 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.