Linking SaaS Software Pricing to Value
Linking the value that a product or service provides to a price is an art, rarely a science. Software pricing, in particular, has suffered from this being done poorly. The old licensed-software model does not cut it anymore. Businesses won't stand to pay for a large number of software licenses they may or may not use, and then pay for maintenance on top of that.
One increasingly popular method of pricing software (especially SaaS) is based on the number of registered users of the product per month. SalesForce uses this model for most of its offerings and has a different price for each level (Professional, Enterprise, etc.). GroupSwim, the company I work for, also uses this model for collaboration.
For software that serves enterprise employees, the number of registered users is a good indicator of the value that a group derives from the product. Companies need only add the employees who will actually use the software, not everyone in the company. Metrics based on internal users have potential, but the application would need to be very specific. (Zoho uses a number of invoices to price its invoice module, which makes perfect sense.)
