When advising both established SaaS leaders and emerging startups, I come across a few general considerations when determining how to price and package a workflow-driven SaaS solution. Setting the stage, the potential options usually align to three simple models:

• Account-based pricing: $ per account * # of active accounts
• Seat-based pricing: $ per seat * # of enrolled seats
• Volume-based pricing: $ per unit * # of units (often data related) consumed

The main difference between the account and seat-based models is that accounts can be potentially shared, while seats are tied to an individual user. Account-based pricing, therefore, can make it tougher to up-sell more accounts if a customer is utilizing the model to make the SaaS solution broadly available for light or infrequent users.

However, for both account and seat-based models, simple "t-shirt size" (small, medium, large) pricing packages can be used to cater types of accounts to individual customer segments, and therefore restrict potential account vs. usage discrepancies. Through a careful analysis of usage trends, certain features, such as reporting capabilities, could be withheld in lower-tier accounts or accounts could automatically scale up based on data volume and/or level of customization (e.g., number of custom events within a 360 dashboard). Another option is differentiation based on account type. Field team managers may need expanded functionality to orchestrate planning while executives would only require "viewer" access (a model championed by BI tools). The key is to have the packages follow the behaviors of a maturing customer, either in top-line growth or organizational structure, aligning their incentives to the provider's (i.e., only increase the burden on the customer when it is offset by their success). And without implementing these strategies under an account or seat-based model, renewal volume at an established customer is largely tied to the provider's ability to "scope-creep" into new uses cases for their solution, a difficult proposition for even the most beloved offerings.

It also can be valuable to explore a go-to-market strategy that involves a combination these models. Many SaaS solutions naturally lend themselves as data platforms in addition to an workflow or orchestration platform. Fully adopted users often originate mounds of propriety data, custom views, saved states, and account profiles, to name a few, making it reasonable to sell a "NewCo Cloud" offering that splits up the financial consideration between the data warehousing and user experience.

Finally, I have seen success when providers choose an entry price point based on the idea of value-based pricing, wherein the product generates ~10x ROI for the customer. Since this is understandably difficult to quantify for many solutions, I advise leaning on the data collected from initial customers around how much it would cost for customers to replicate the solution in-house or through a combination of other tools, how much time is currently spent recreating the same output, and what financial outcome have similar solutions driven. This generates visibility into levers the customer would use when evaluating the business case for for the solution and point me in the direction of right pricing. However, that being said, pricing conversations should not focus on the toolset's premium on the comparable cost basis, but rather the fact that the SaaS solution would provide a "premium" solution. On average, I have observed that enterprise technology customers, which are often the early-adopters for new SaaS solutions, are open to fast-tracking pilots in the $20-50 per account/seat per month range, based on a quick margin calculation on an ACV within the $25-50k range.