[barkingcat]

SaaS vendors are insane these days.

some really dark patterns: block purchases (for ex. you can only buy 100 licenses, not 49 or 52), mandatory "upgrade" for security features like SSO, mandatory licenses for people signing up for accounts that you didn't specifically ask for, and the worst is asking for the "enterprise" plan (with egregious minimum license counts, even if you just use 50) in order to control / admin accounts (so you can audit for exited employees, etc).

the pattern is usually like you said, someone tries a tool for $10/month, and then gets their team on it, which let's say is 10 people. not bad. Then it gets out on the grapevine and other teams want to try - goes to 50 people ok still ok.

but then the sass vendor start using dark patterns and all of a sudden you're getting a bill for 1000 accounts (sorry, can't sell you any less!) at the "enterprise" price of $100/account/month.

and now you're fighting with the sass company to actually disable accounts of people who left instead of just keeping it "greyed out" but still visible, you just can't log in and can't control it ....

[unlogic]

I believe you, but it would be nice if you called out the exact vendors that do that, for others to be cautious. It's not like their pricing is under NDA, right?