[jemmyw]

I don't know, it seems like a pretty good way to price things. Yes, you have to consider if you want to pay for each user you give access to. But the point is usually that giving someone access is the value of the product to you. Plus, costs tend to scale by seat. A major cost is support rather than data or load.

What would suck more than per seat is dividing cost+profit over all customers equally and ending up needing to charge a huge amount for anyone to access with unlimited users. Also bad is going under by not having a sustainable business.

To summarize:

(1) For most user facing products, the value is user access, so that's what you pay for. (2) Costs scale by seat due to increased complexity and support.