Ask IH: How to price a SaaS service that depends on computation and scale?
I am trying to build a SaaS that performs some computation given some data. Because cost depends on how much computation is used, I cannot charge a customer unless the task is complete. As an engineer, I don't have much of an idea as to how to think about it. I have few questions on billing and pricing:
- What would be the safest way to price such services so that I don't have to pay a lot of money out of pocket when user is abusing the service?
- Should I bill the customer after every job or monthly?
- How can I help customers have some control over billing?
- Does it make sense to charge them per job and collect utilization data before introducing monthly/yearly plans?
Any ideas?
To prevent abuse you could introduce a computation limit. The limit should be high enough for most customers not to hit it. Then either allow raising the limit by sending you an email or drop it automatically if the customer has a good payment history.
AWS does the same with all their services and I think it's actually quite a clever and simple solution.
This comment was deleted 5 years ago
Thanks! I am not using stripe but I can implement metered billing. Is it a good idea to sell monthly plans right from the start or does it make sense to collect some usage data and then come up with monthly plans?
This comment was deleted 5 years ago