Per-Unit (Per Seat or Other Unit) + Usage-Based Pricing
A unit-based price that increases when more units are purchased, plus a usage-based price that increases with usage.
What is Per Seat + Usage-Based Pricing?
This pricing model combines a per Seat fee with a usage-based fee.
The “Seat” in per Seat Pricing refers to the seat of someone sitting in front of your software using it.
Usage-based pricing means that your customers get charged based on how much they used your product or a specific feature of your product during a billing cycle. This is always a unit of measure, such as the number of lookups, the amount of storage, etc. This means your customers start paying relatively little when they first start using your product, but you still preserve the ability to increase your revenue over time because the price is ideally directly tied with the value a customer receives.
Combining these models allows you to monetize both of these different factors that provide value to your customers.
Why this model?
You mentioned that the value that your customers receive scales with both the number of users using your product and a specific usage metric. Using this pricing model means that every billing cycle, you’re invoicing a customer for the amount of a feature they used as well as how many people were using the service. Think of this like a family phone plan: you pay for each device or phone line you have, as well as how much data you use each month.
This model ensures your customers aren’t having to overpay for sets of features they’re not using, and are just paying for what they’ve actually used and the number of people they had using it. On the flip side, you’re getting more revenue by monetizing each of these variables.