Part One: Strategy · The stance of the business
Tiers, add-ons and stacked charges let a company charge each customer what they can bear. People who cannot work out what they will pay feel tricked, even at a fair price.
Pricing pages grow the way products do, one sensible addition at a time. A cheaper tier to catch small customers. A limit on the middle tier to push people up. A per-seat charge, then a per-contact charge, then a platform fee. Each was added by someone looking at a spreadsheet, and each made the spreadsheet look better.
Now stand where the buyer stands. She wants to know one thing: what will this cost me next year? To find out she must guess how many seats, contacts and "automations" she will use, read three footnotes, and then talk to sales, who will not say a number on the first call. She does not conclude that the pricing is sophisticated. She concludes that someone is hiding something.
That suspicion does not end at purchase. Every unexpected line on a bill confirms it. People start rationing their use of the product to avoid a charge they do not understand, which is an odd thing to make a customer do.
Someone who does not set the price can still count what the present one costs: the billing questions that reach support, and the days a deal waits on a quote.
Charging by use is fine when there is one unit and the customer already counts it. Stripe launched with one published rate, a percentage plus a fixed fee on each successful charge, and no setup fee or monthly fee. A shop owner could work out her bill from her own sales. Three units multiplied together are a different matter.
A price people can work out does leave money uncollected, because some customers would have paid more. What it buys is a faster yes, fewer billing disputes, and customers who recommend the product without adding a warning.
Therefore:
Set a price a customer can work out alone and explain to someone else in one sentence. Show the whole of it before they commit, including what happens when they grow.
In practice. Ask someone outside the company to read the pricing page and tell you what a ten-person firm would pay in a year. Time them. Note every question they ask.
Goes with. A plain price is easier once you know what is ENOUGH (12). When it changes, OLD CUSTOMERS KEEP THEIR DEAL (57). A charge that appears only at the last step breaks NO TRICKS (83).