INSIGHTS
Workplace by Facebook charges organizations for its services based on the number of users within the organization's network.
Creative Cloud by Adobe offers a variety of pricing options that cater specifically to individuals, schools and institutions, businesses, and students and teachers.
Sales Cloud's fees are divided into monthly payments, but users are billed annually, and all plans require an annual contract from each user.
Creative Cloud by Adobe offers a variety of pricing options that cater specifically to individuals, schools and institutions, businesses, and students and teachers.
Sales Cloud's fees are divided into monthly payments, but users are billed annually, and all plans require an annual contract from each user.
FINDINGS
The team has provided an overview of the pricing structure
of five SaaS platforms — Slack, Dynamic Signal, Workplace by Facebook, Sales Cloud by Salesforce, and Adobe Creative Cloud. We found that these firms employ varying approaches when determining how to price their services. Slack, Creative Cloud, Workplace, and Sales Cloud have specific across-the-board pricing structures, while Dynamic Signal's pricing is custom-determined. Of the five firms analyzed, Adobe's pricing structure is the most customer-specific. A deep dive of our findings can be found below, along with a brief analysis of each pricing structure.
of five SaaS platforms — Slack, Dynamic Signal, Workplace by Facebook, Sales Cloud by Salesforce, and Adobe Creative Cloud. We found that these firms employ varying approaches when determining how to price their services. Slack, Creative Cloud, Workplace, and Sales Cloud have specific across-the-board pricing structures, while Dynamic Signal's pricing is custom-determined. Of the five firms analyzed, Adobe's pricing structure is the most customer-specific. A deep dive of our findings can be found below, along with a brief analysis of each pricing structure.
Slack offers two general routes for subscription and, therefore, pricing. There is Slack for Teams, which is further divided into three pricing plans, and the Slack Enterprise Grid. Slack for teams is divided into Free, Standard, and Plus pricing. Within this pricing structure, Slack charges per user. Additionally, the number of platform features that can be accessed by each user is based on the pricing plan selected. Some of the features that are based on pricing plan include access to voice/video calls, the ability to access previous messages, guest access to the workspace, and app integration. To give a few specific examples, subscribers to the Free plan get access to 10 app integrations and can search up to 10,000 of the teams most recent messages. These features are unlimited for Standard and Plus users. Standard users can also allow guest access, which Free users cannot do. Slack also bills each user per month under these plans, and subscription is renewed annually.
Slack’s Enterprise Grid, which was recently introduced and is targeted at larger companies (like PayPal and CapitalOne, which already use the service), is priced on a case-by-case basis, where an overall quote is provided that gives the team access to an exhaustive set of Slack’s features, along with features that were specifically built for large-scale corporate communication.
Slack’s pricing plans appear to be straightforward and are perceived positively by consumers. The team at Price Intelligently, which reviewed the software and is also a user of the service, believes that the price structure’s value metrics and pricing tiers are optimal for both user and service provider. According to that company, “The free tier increases acquisition, the middle tier increases retention, [and] the top tier increases expansion.” That company itself, after starting out with Slack’s Free plan, upgraded to Standard because “it totally made sense.”
DYNAMIC SIGNAL
Dynamic Signal’s prices for its varied services are all quote-based and vary from user to user (team to team). Because of the individualistic nature of Dynamic Signal’s pricing, there is limited publicly available information about its structure beyond the fact that is subscription-based and offers a 14-day free trial to prospective customers. However, a 2013 PR Week article tells us that Dynamic Signal bases its quotes on “number of employees, size/geography of the company, features, customization, and services.” This source also tells us that at the time, Dynamic Signal’s quote could range from $5,000 to $50,000 per company, depending on the range of features and services mentioned above. Using this information and the fact that the pricing is completely quote-based, we can make the assumption that Dynamic Signal offers one overarching quote to each company that encompasses all agreed-upon features and services. However, considering the age of this article, we are unsure whether this structure has changed over the past few years.
The team found that this pricing structure might be disenchanting to prospective clients as it does not give the service provider much flexibility to disclose exact price ranges as most other players in the industry do. (For example, all of the other companies mentioned in this request provided exact figures.) However, using this price structure, it is always possible for the provider to provide loose estimates if they choose to do so.
WORKPLACE BY FACEBOOK
Workplace recently made changes to its price structure to make its pricing “fair, simple and predictable.” Workplace’s pricing structure is two-tiered: there is a free version, Standard, and pair-for version, Premium. The Standard option allows users to access a basic version of the platform’s features, but does not allow what Workplace calls Enterprise Features, which include administrative controls, monitoring tools for IT teams, and specific abilities for software integration. The Premium option allows all of the features just listed.
The Premium feature works by charging the client organization a standard fee — $3 — for each active service user. This across-the-board pricing structure for Premium users is a major change and only affects users who signed on for the product after the change was implemented. Older users must still adhere to the pre-change price model. Before the aforementioned change to Workplace’s pricing model, Premium users were charged based on the number of active users within each client’s organization. More specifically, the more active users one had, the less the cost would be. To get even more detailed, “Customers were previously charged $3 per active user for the first 1,000 active users; $2 per active user for the next 9,000 active users; and finally $1 for each additional active user.”
Workplace’s new pricing structure allows a more simple and straightforward approach to pricing for Premium users, which was the very reason for this revision. However, new users who have networks of more than 1,000 users will be at a disadvantage as they will now have to pay more for each user than they would have had to before, thus increasing their overall cost.
Sales Cloud CRM by Salesforce has four pricing levels that are divided based on feature availability and are paid per user. The cheapest pricing level, Salesforce Essentials ($25), is only available to teams of five or less and has a limited number of features. The other three pricing plans can accommodate any number of users. As one moves up the price tier, to Lightning Professional and further to Lightning Enterprise, the features available in the previous tier, along with others, become available. Lightning Professional and Enterprise offer increased levels of freedom and customization. The Lightning Unlimited price plan unlocks all features of the service. Although the fees are structured in a month-by-month division, users are billed annually on all price plans, and all plans require an annual contract from each user.
Sales Cloud CRM’s pricing structure is straightforward and reflective of industry standards of providing a structure based on features. However, its decision to limit the lowest-level price plan to groups of between one and five is unconventional.
ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD
Adobe Creative Cloud employs a complex pricing structure that is designed to cater to different groups of people who use the product. Creative Cloud’s pricing structure takes into account in different ways individuals, students and teachers, businesses, and schools and universities. All plans are structured as month-by-month payment. The pricing structure for Creative Cloud for individuals is further broken down to be dependent on whether the individual wants a Photography plan, a Single App plan, access to all apps, or access to all apps, plus Adobe Stock. According to Adobe, the plan that allows access to all apps is most popular with users.
There are two pricing options available to businesses, one that gives access to a single app, and an all-access option. Creative Cloud also encourages larger businesses to reach out to them for custom pricing plans and access to Creative Cloud Enterprise, which tailors pricing specifically for larger businesses. Creative Cloud also offers special discounted prices to students and teachers. With regard to institutions overall, the suite of products can be licensed based on device (for example, 50 computers in a lab being outfitted with the service) or user (for example, 50 children and two teachers can be granted access).
Creative Cloud's user-specific pricing structure is effective as it allows users to select plans based on their individual needs. It also allows larger institutions, like schools, to access the products in a way that is particularly designed for them, as opposed to having to spend a generic high cost for all students, for example.
WHAT HAS BEEN SAID?
In essence, the SaaS firms explored each price their services in different ways. Dynamic Signal offers quote-based prices only, while Workplace, Slack, and Sales Cloud price their services based on product features. Creative Cloud offers a wide range of pricing plans that cater to users in different categories and who use the products in different ways.