Why we charge less for companies that grow.

Pricing your product is never a simple task.

In the beginning pricing hadn’t been at the forefront of our todo list, instead we focused on fine tuning features and growing our customer base. Simplifyd was initially free to all those who signed up for Beta, I had toyed with the idea of charging a couple of dollars for beta but decided against it. A Public Beta worked well for us as we were able to get quality feedback from our users and in return they influenced the future development our feature set.

However this arrangement was never a long term plan, eventually it became apparent that it was time to establish a value for our product. From the get go, growing a profitable business was always the aim with this Start Up. With functionality at a good place and stable and a noticeable increase in its interest, we were faced with the increasing dilemma of pricing.

The next question was how much should we charge?

The founding aim behind this company was to simplify the admin and processes required to run a business as an individual, a small teams or new business. As a startup ourselves we sympathised with those trying to get off the ground, those who would benefit from smart saas apps to help run their business, but would struggle with the multiple costs usually incurred when these add up.

So when it came to evaluating the cost, we had a couple of aims in mind:
- Simplicity was key — nothing confusing that would scare people off.
- It should be affordable — whether you were a individual or growing business.

We considered similar pricing models to other saas applications:
- A tiered pricing structure.
- A flat rate and extra add ons based on features.
- We could bill per company or individual team member.

Why we charge less for companies that grow.

Our initial ideas were too complex for our aims, we wanted something that would prove to be valuable for our customer and not an expense. We didn’t want something unaffordable or complex, that would discourage those that were growing.

The key turning point can be found in the apps name, Simplifyd. While everyone is focusing on the singular niche application or functional product, we are trying to produce a simple usable product that would encompass all the core functions you would need to run a business. A pricing model that was based on the number of features or individuals usually ends up undercharging or overcharging. We wanted to support growing businesses and not penalise them for growth, so charging extras or inflated base prices wasn’t the way forward for us.

As a team we chose a straightforward sign up, so that with this app you could just hit the ground running. We came up with a simple solution, everything included, no hidden costs and a free trial.

Today’s pricing model.

We offer a 30 day trial — Experience comes first. Everyone should have the chance to trial a product before being bombarded with supplying credit card details, you get to test drive a car or view a house, why not a tool that can help run you business? It was important to us that people tried the product, enjoyed it and encouraged others to give it a go.

We charge a flat rate not based on features — It’s quite simple, you pay a flat rate and with it comes all the existing features. As Simplifyd becomes more refined and new integrations are added these automatically become available to you with no extra cost. Providing more value to our users.

A single monthly cost for the sole reason that largely our users were not those who would want to spend a large sum of money in one go.

And for those still growing? We kept it simple, for each new team member added the additional cost would decrease. Once your team reached 5+ members the cost for extra individuals became zero.

For more details, take a look at our pricing model here.

Like any part of running a business, there is always a few creases to press out and any feedback is great. Leave us a comment below or if you enjoyed our post then please share it!