SaaS: Scalar versus Static Pricing

The Client
A B2B SaaS founder approached us to validate his pricing model. His tool creates custom voice channels in community chat servers for networking events. The proposed model charged based on how long users remained in the voice chat.

The Problem
At first glance, charging by time seems straightforward—until you realize the service isn’t actively doing anything while someone is in the channel. It’s like being charged for sitting on your own front porch.

It’s easy for founders and engineers to overcomplicate pricing—especially in SaaS, where it can seem like pricing is determined by throwing darts at a corkboard. But users don’t think that way. When they see variable billing, especially business users with tight margins, they imagine worst-case invoices. If they can’t justify the cost based on what the product is doing, they’ll feel cheated—and likely walk away, even if the product is a good fit.

The Answer
In most cases, pricing should be a multiple of your actual costs. The only good reasons to deviate from this are:

1. When the customer has no real way of estimating what the cost should be, or

2. When you're the only solution on the market.

You see the latter in pharmaceuticals or things like Vantablack—products so unique or complex, there's no meaningful comparison.

Our Solution
In this case, the only real cost was negligible compute time, which didn’t vary much between customers. So we advised setting a simple, flat monthly rate with a usage cap based on the number of events the user could have along with an unlimited plan to introduce some light scarcity and a premium offer. This aligns with user expectations for SaaS: they assume their subscription funds ongoing development and support; and in return, they get predictable costs.