[cph_dev]

Hello Kohanz, Thanks for the comment, we have talked with few usually when we give a demo (8-10 per week) we ask them what they are looking for and most of them are in the tool because of covid as teams are remote and second it is free tool.

Then there is another segment these are large enterprises and they ask us a lot about security, sso and integrations we have quoted them price from 1 USD per user per month to 10 USD and reaction is mixed some thinks even 1USD is high price for this kind of tool. We know that many of these will convert but do not know exactly how many, the last type is the users who are using the tool for more then one year and they praise the tool as how it has evolved in this time and they get real value but not all of these will convert.

The think i am worried is that our growth happened like this, A dev team from a company started using it and then they like it and in few months it will be 5-15 teams from same company will start using it because they liked it and it was free now

If we go hard with pricing and lockout free users then our growth may suffer, Is it a good idea in our case to offer 90% of the product as free and lockout the remaining 10% features for paid.

One of my friend in SaaS thinks we are crazy stupid to do it like this, he suggests that we lockout the whole product and offer 1 month trial, the people who really needs this will pay and rest will run away, and I do not feel comfortable doing this. Sorry for the long answer but just want to write everything.

[sigil]

> Then there is another segment these are large enterprises and they ask us a lot about security, sso and integrations we have quoted them price from 1 USD per user per month to 10 USD and reaction is mixed some thinks even 1USD is high price for this kind of tool.

The numbers you are contemplating here are shockingly low — 1000x too low — for enterprise SaaS. Questions about security and SSO are “tells” that you’re dealing with a very different kind of customer.

If you want to sell to large enterprises, this patio11 article is a good start: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterpris...

Do you or your co-founders have a strong sales background? If not, skip the whole enterprise sales thing for now and focus on converting consumer accounts. With half a million users, even a low conversion rate at a low price point should turn this into a profitable business.

[kohanz]

Enterprise SAAS charge between $1,000 and $10,000 USD per seat per month?

[sigil]

In some cases! It sounds like your tool doesn’t (yet) deliver that kind of value. If your viable price point really is closer to $10/seat, consider reframing these conversations as “$1,000/month for up to 100 users.” As patio11 points out in that essay, dollar figures below $500 or so seem like a rounding error to an enterprise. Or worse, something unserious.

[noodle]

Its hard to give more specific advice without knowing more about the product, but to me it does sound like the most straightforward path would be to keep your existing free plan as-is today, and then offer a paid plan structure on top of it, turning yourself into a freemium offering.

You don't need to reduce your free offering to make space for a paid plan - not right now, at least. Maybe you will eventually, but if you think you still have space to grow your free plan and it the unit economics are manageable for you, that's a half million or so and growing hot leads for your paid plan.

> The think i am worried is that our growth happened like this, A dev team from a company started using it and then they like it and in few months it will be 5-15 teams from same company will start using it because they liked it and it was free now

If an entire engineering organization with multiple teams is using your product, the vast majority will pay for it if you find the right features, pricing and positioning. A small dev team at an unfunded, pre-revenue startup might want to pinch pennies some, but if orgs that have a significant sized engineering team are starting to use your tool, paying a reasonable amount monthly is a rounding error compared to the cost of their salaries.

> Then there is another segment these are large enterprises and they ask us a lot about security, sso and integrations we have quoted them price from 1 USD per user per month to 10 USD and reaction is mixed some thinks even 1USD is high price for this kind of tool.

There is always difficulty in getting people to go from free to paid. It doesn't matter how much the pricetag is, there's resistance to pulling out the wallet across the board. You shouldn't be trying to minimize the price of your product. In fact, I'd personally look at a $1 price tag and wonder if the software is robust enough to use at my organization. It would make me NOT want to buy it. Price it reasonably. Some people will never pay for your product. Your goal isn't to convert all of your users to paid accounts, your goal is to convert enough people at an appropriate pricing structure for you to have a sustainable, successful business.

[cph_dev]

Thanks, it is very helpful