[timjones]

Thanks for the thoughts! I agree, and was thinking something along these lines as well.

I'm leaning towards having a permanent free tier with a low seat limit.

On billing, I'll definitely have an annual subscription option. From interviews I found that, in some cases, team leads will have to file expense reports and doing it monthly would be too tedious.

I'll have to think through offering quarterly and semi-annual plans. My gut feel is that it'd be too much complexity to have 3-4 options.

[bak3y]

Consider also a "true-up" model where buyers can exceed their user quota on your platform until their subscription is set to renew. Then perhaps you can catch the big multi-team renewals due to inertia, as well as catching back-pay for the months they were over subscribed?

[timjones]

Interesting. So if their 12-month plan allows for 100 seats, and they grow to 150 seats during those 12 months, then for month 13 they would:

1. Pay a pro-rated amount for exceeding the seat limit during the first 12 months.

2. Pay the 12-month contract rate for 150 seats (or maybe more if they expect to continue to grow)

Is this a common practice?

[thaumasiotes]

I have no relevant experience, but I felt I should note that I would be extremely offended by being billed retroactively.

Hopefully you would provide some notification at the time they exceed their limit.

[TheAdamAndChe]

I second this. Instead of billing retroactively, consider just not billing for the extra seats during that period. Maybe notify the user that they've entered a grace period for this billing cycle, but starting next cycle they can expect to get charged for the extra seats.