What's this SaaS model called?
What's this SaaS model called?
I'm planning to offer a free plan (and a paid plan) for my B2B SaaS platform designed for ecommerce businesses.
Part of the service is online software that integrates with their store but the other involves sending a piece of technology we invented to their customers' home addresses in the mail. Each time this is sent, our client pays us $2.
So the platform itself is free but there are usage charges. Is this model called something in particular? Is it even SaaS?
I am not sure if this is what you were looking for, but this is a b2b2c example. Also, a build to order production model. And if you are not selling a software charging by usage, no other is not saas.
It's a little hard to help you without you providing more descriptive context. No one is looking to steal your idea. What is the "piece of technology"? Is it hardware or software? Are you monetising the delivery of the "piece of technology" (e.g. selling a tangible good) or only the actual usage of it once it's in someone's hands? If it's the latter-
This is known as usage-based billing. Or sometimes PAYG (pay as you go), although the latter is often associated with telecom, energy, IOT.
Hi Steven!
Thanks for your answer! Apologies for being cagey, it's just in my nature, I'm still trying to get to grips with the whole 'nobody is out to steal your idea' thing. I'll get there eventually!
It's a small piece of hardware delivered to customers in the mail. The customer purchases it from the webstore and we manufacture and deliver it to the customer on behalf of the store (drop shipped). Effectively it's very similar to print-on-demand. We charge the STORE a flat fee each time its shipped. The STORE charges the customer and can pass on our fee to them if they wish (so they don't actually pay anything net).
Once the hardware is in the customers hands it then interacts with our 'software' which is integrated with the store's backend, which we have multiple plans for with varying feature sets and usage limits.
SO it's kind of a mix between freemium Saas, and a tangible product that we charge for... maybe there's no name for it..
In that case you're on the right track with what I suggested. There's a number of billing platforms that can support this (and mixed) pricing models.