Updated October 2026. This page first appeared in 2018 as a comparison of five software products' price lists. Those lists are kept below so you can see how they aged. The useful part comes first: the four ways software is priced today, and the four questions that decide what you actually pay.
The short answer: almost every software subscription is one of four models: a price per seat, a price per unit of use, a ladder of feature tiers, or a negotiated quote. Most products mix two. Our guide to seats, credits and outcomes explains how to read a 2026 price page; this page shows what changed since 2018.
The four pricing models you will meet
| Model | What drives the bill | Typical of | The trap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per seat | Number of users, sometimes only active users | Chat, CRM, office suites | Paying for provisioned seats nobody uses |
| Usage or credits | Messages, API calls, storage, AI credits | Cloud, data and AI tools | Overage rates and credit expiry |
| Feature tiers | Which plan unlocks which capability | Almost everything | One needed feature forcing the top tier |
| Quote | Negotiation; often per employee | Enterprise and internal-communications tools | No public price to benchmark against |
The 2018 version of this page sorted five products into those boxes. Two of the five no longer exist in the form described, and the three survivors all added a usage element, mostly for AI features.
What happened to the five products from 2018
| Product | 2018 model | 2026 position |
|---|---|---|
| Slack | Free, Standard and Plus per user; Enterprise Grid by quote | Free, Pro, Business+ and Enterprise Grid. Still per active user, billed yearly or monthly, with AI features gating the upper tiers. Salesforce bought Slack in 2021. |
| Dynamic Signal | Quote only, by employee count and features | Merged with SocialChorus in 2021 to form Firstup. Pricing remains quote-based. |
| Workplace by Facebook | Free Standard tier; Premium at a flat $3 per active user | Meta closed Workplace. It went read-only in September 2025 and shut down in 2026; customers were pointed to Zoom's Workvivo. |
| Salesforce Sales Cloud | Four tiers from $25 per user per month, annual contracts | Starter $25, Pro $100, Enterprise $195, Unlimited $395 and an AI-bundled top tier at $550 per user per month, annual billing above Starter. |
| Adobe Creative Cloud | Single app or all apps; separate student, business and school plans | Same shape, higher prices. In June 2025 the all-apps plan split into Standard and Pro tiers, with generative-AI credits as the dividing line. |
The pattern across all five: the per-seat price is the floor. Growth comes from AI credits and from pushing the feature you need into the next tier.
Four questions before you sign
- Which seats are billed? Active users, provisioned users or every employee? Slack bills active members; many CRMs bill every licence you create.
- What does the monthly price assume? A figure marked "billed annually" is a twelve-month commitment. The cancel-any-month price is usually 20 to 30 percent higher.
- Where is the usage cap? Find the message, storage or credit limit, the overage rate and whether unused credits expire.
- Can you leave with your data? Test the export on the trial. A product that exports cleanly keeps its renewal price honest.
A ten-person team, priced for a year
Take a sales team of ten that needs pipeline reports and email integration. On the Salesforce list above, Starter is $3,000 a year, Pro is $12,000. If reports push you to Enterprise, the same ten people cost $23,400. The seat count never changed; one feature multiplied the bill by nearly eight.
That is the comparison worth making for any product: one year, the seats you will really activate, the features you cannot do without, and the usage you expect. Headline monthly prices hide all four.
Frequently asked questions
Why do price pages show a monthly price if I am billed yearly?
Because a small monthly number sells better. Read the footnote under the price; "billed annually" means the whole year is due up front or committed.
Are credits cheaper than seats?
For light, uneven use, often yes. For steady daily use, a seat is usually cheaper and easier to budget. Work out a month of your real usage at the credit rate before choosing.
Can a small team negotiate?
Rarely on list price, but often on the term. Ask for monthly billing at the annual rate for the first quarter, or for the next tier's one feature as an add-on.
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