
Ask HN: Is above 1000 a month too expensive? - win66
Software license. Unlimited seats. Per Site. I don&#x27;t know anything about how to price, just considering what&#x27;s the value of this. This will price out smaller buyers, but will it be too expensive for larger business consumers?<p>I haven&#x27;t worked out the marketing yet but the product is at https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dosyago&#x2F;BrowserGap<p>I guess I&#x27;m wondering how this compares to other relatively expensive business software license purchases, and what people&#x27;s gut reaction is, to what I think is a very expensive price. A quick summary is it&#x27;s a browser you can embed in your web app, one use case is to unify user flows across disparate applications.
======
matt_s
If you get more specific about a problem/pain it solves that costs lots of
money and headaches then that might be too low.

The use case I'm thinking of is a user in a call center environment that needs
to process a customers credit card transaction. PCI compliance level could
dictate that card info not sit in rest on that call center network (I haven't
worked in that space in a while). They could use your app to securely run a
remote browser on a PCI compliant network and do the transaction.

Sometimes this is solved with hardware from vendors so the call center person
has a separate device they need to use to process the transaction (basically a
terminal on a protected network). Sometimes the call center is an outsourced
function that scales up with call volume and more capacity is restricted to
the number of people that have the special hardware.

If its possible to replace the hardware with software and be compliant, that
removes a lot of operational cost from the business, way more than $12k/year.

~~~
win66
That's a good idea. would it be a bad idea to reach out to my email with some
names of companies in this space? I just wouldn't know where to start, it send
that what you know would be very helpful. cris@dosycorp.com

~~~
matt_s
You would have to become versed in PCI compliance and the ins/outs of
different levels of that to know if your solution is 100% in line with what
the latest security guidance is.

Any company that does a lot of CC processing could be a candidate, throw a
dart at the Fortune 500 list and you'll likely hit one. Typically those types
of companies expect enterprise solutions.

Small businesses might be a better starting point in that space but they won't
have deep pockets. This thread [0] gives a perspective of PCI compliance
challenge, security scans, etc.

PCI is just one aspect that I thought of where your solution might fit, there
are probably other similar information security pain points you could explore.

[0] [https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/214513/being-
to...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/214513/being-told-my-
network-isnt-pci-compliant-i-dont-even-have-a-server-do-i-ha)

------
muzani
Compare to your competitors. I've worked for a place that charges about as
much, but people line up to buy it because their competitors charge ten times
more.

If you have no competition, your competitor is whatever hack the client is
doing. In many business applications, that's hiring qualified people to gather
the data, enter it, process it, upload it.

In your case, it might be a feature your clients are building themselves.
$1000 might be about 20 man hours. If they're spending that much per month on
it, it's an easy buy.

------
lol636363
One of my client charged $100k+ for their SaaS product. It simply guided
clients to setup their IT budgets. They had 10s of customers. The value this
software provided was worth it to the right customer.

~~~
win66
Per year?

~~~
lol636363
Yeah per year. Tbf they also provided a lot of hands on consulting and
training too.

------
lvturner
I mean, it depends, for a company of 2-10 people, it's astronomical, if I have
over 1000 people at one location who are using it, it's waaaay to cheap.

~~~
muzani
If it's a company of 6 people who have one engineer hired full time to build
and maintain the feature, it's cheap.

------
brudgers
If it solves a meaningful business problem for an adequately capitalized
business, $1000/month is approximately free. Solving meaningful business
problems for adequately capitalized businesses is a sound basis for a
business. And charging $1000/month means you can have an adequately funded
business with only a 100 customers or so. Which means you can provide good
customer support.

------
auganov
Above a certain price point you probably want an ad hoc sales process. $1000
flat rate sounds like an awkward price point. Expensive enough to not get any
random sales, but might be too cheap to build a big B2B business around it.
Especially if the market is small. You want to extract as much as possible
from people who can pay.

At this price you'll be doing calls either way. Why give the price away?

~~~
win66
You mean, why advertise what the price is? Or give it away too cheaply? I
don't understand the idea of not advertising the price... is it basically to
charge each customer a custom price?

~~~
auganov
> is it basically to charge each customer a custom price?

Yes. You just have a "contact sales" type of stuff on the website and
promotional materials instead of an actual pricing page. Very common in high
ticket B2B.

I don't understand the product or use case too well to suggest how to price
it. But I understand that usage would vary widely between customers. Hence
price should vary greatly too.

I don't know what's your situation and how well connected you are in this
industry. But generally at this price point people won't just come on your
site and buy it. There will be some back and forth either way. And you
probably will have to do outreach. So going to have a lot of opportunities to
discuss price.

At this point it sounds to me like your greatest priority should be to
actually talk to some customers.

------
codingdave
How much money would it cost your customers to solve the same problem without
your software? If they are spending more than $1000 a month already on this
problem, then they can afford the software at that price.

