Volume Pricing / Partner Pricing Question for an API SaaS

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#1

Hey everyone, it’s been a while since I posted last. I have this real estate API software and I’m starting to get inquires from other companies who also build SaaS apps looking to integrate w/ my product.

My normal pricing starts at $99, this has been for access to one real estate board’s data and my initial set of customers (digital agencies) build one custom site w/ that access.

I’m getting leads though from companies who have a SaaS platform where they do 100s of sites a month per board. Most seem to charge about $40-60 a month + a flat setup fee.

My cost is primarily importing listings on a single board, after that it costs me virtually nothing to issue an API token for the data (as long as the client is the member of the board).

Anyway trying to figure out a pricing structure for these types of customers. I’m thinking:

$99 / mo per board access, you get one site
each additional site to the same board = $19 - $30 /mo, not sure if I should start high

What do you guys think? Is this a good pricing structure? Should I keep the additional site fee flat, or offer volume discount the more sites they sign up?

Thanks! Hoping to really get back into this forum. It’s grown so much!

#2

It makes sense that you’d seek to get a cut of the extra business generated by the “1 board x 100s of sites” model, regardless of your actual incremental costs (you want to price primarily against your value because incremental costs for software/information are typically close to 0). But you have to price at the right level so that these customers won’t feel gouged out of a significant chunk of their own revenue/customer.

In other words the incremental price per site should feel reasonable to this new customer segment relative to how much they’re likely to earn on each incremental site derived from the same board. If you can find that number, you’ll have a better sense of where to put your pricing. If you make a $30 cut out of their own $1000/mo revenue stream, that’s much more palatable than say $30 out of their $100 topline revenue/site.

#3

These sites sound pretty large if it’s hundreds of sites per board and there’s a bunch of boards. I could see them finding the tracking of pricing per board burdensome. It might be useful to treat this as more of an enterprise situation. Every board for $X0,000 or something like that. They can’t build it themselves for less and then they still have to maintain it, but they also don’t have to micro-manage which boards they’ve purchased from you etc etc.

#4

Thanks @otravers that’s good advice. I’ll see if I can find out more about their business model and see if I can find that number.

#5

Gotcha, that seems easier on both ends. I’m not sure if the 100s per board is a volume they’re currently doing or something they’re aspiring too.

#6

You’ll probably find this interesting: http://sixteenventures.com/enterprise-pricing

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