SaaS Pricing Practices Typology: A Case Study

Abstract

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) pricing addresses decisions of monetary compensation and the conditions for the SaaS solution to the customer. Efficient SaaS pricing requires sophisticated decision-making and analytics, as well as coordination and compromises between the many business functions involved. The decision-making includes integrated analysis of different perspectives and streams of information. Like in many other product management areas, there is no silver-bullet solution for pricing. We conducted a multiple case study using fifteen SaaS companies with data collection primarily through semi-structured interviews to assess SaaS pricing practices and identify major factors that affect the way pricing is done. We identified four distinct types of SaaS pricing patterns and detailed their main characteristics.