Is charging by consumption (usage-based pricing) a superior model for a business? When we say UBP, we mean charging customers by how much they use, rather than a constant amount of seats per month or API calls per month.

On on hand, UBP lubricates the customer conversion funnel. Prospects sign up and grow their accounts seamlessly. Usage data feeds the PLG lead score, and AEs outbound to the most promising users. Customers expand as their needs dictate and customer segments fall out from usage data

On the other hand, customers may be frustrated to estimate how much of a product they’ll use and the surprise of overage charges. Separately, the startup may have to reinvent its GTM: new AE quotas, sales materials, margin calculations.

These three questions may help guide a startup to the best answer:

1. Is my startup selling an application or infrastructure?

Application software companies sell seats. Infrastructure companies sell API calls, licenses per core or host, SMSs, bandwidth, storage by the GB. Salesforce largely set the standard for selling application seats.

Most of the time, application software companies don’t sell seats via UBP. Slack is a notable exception. Selling constant seat counts stems from the perception that the number of people using software shouldn’t change that much from one month to the next for most software. The predictability of fixed costs outweighs the benefits of flexibility.

Infrastructure usage can vary widely depending on seasonality (retail traffic spikes in Q4), developer activity (migration from one architecture to the next), new product launches, amongst other factors.

Selling UBP to a buyer accustomed to buying a flat seat count introduces more friction into the sales process. Often, the effort probably isn’t worth it, unless the company’s stated strategy is to differentiate on price structure.

2. What should my unit of pricing be?

The goal of UBP is to align the cost of software with the value. The unit of pricing is the crux to unlocking that puzzle.

The unit must be easy for a customer to understand, simple to predict, and crystal-clear so there aren’t arguments on what a unit is or isn’t in the future.

Company	Product	Unit	Pricing
AppDynamics	APM	CPU Core	$6 / core / month
ScoutAPM	APM	API Call	$1 / API call / month
Lightstep	APM	Service	$85 / service / month
Instana	APM	Host	$75 / host / month
Splunk	APM	Host	$55 / host / month
DataDog	APM	Host	$31 / host / month

Aligning on a particular unit isn’t easy. Within the same space, companies have different takes. Here’s a table of the usage-based pricing schemes of Application Performance Monitoring (APM) companies' that I put together from scanning each business’s pricing page. There are four different units across these six companies.

Having varying units might be an advantage: it’s harder for customers to price discriminate. How many API calls per host or services per host is the same as $31 per host per month?

But it might confuse the customer who’s accustomed /ato buying the service in a different way.

Is your startup differentiating on pricing to compete with an incumbent? Or are selling a superior product at a premium in which case using the same pricing model with higher fees reinforces the brand?

3. Can this pricing model achieve certain boundary pricing conditions?

How much should a Fortune 500 bank pay for your startup? How about a 50 person SaaS company?

The UBP pricing scheme needs to satisfy these boundary conditions: a certain customer ought to pay a certain amount in order for the business to succeed.

Often, a straight UBP pricing model doesn’t scale into the enterprise. A F500 may not consume enough units to justify a $250k or $2m deal. Introducing pricing layers on the unit of pricing can remedy this challenge. Basic units cost $1. Units that are HIPAA compliant cost 3x as much and FINRA compliant is one dollar more per unit.

Sometimes, companies add a second part to the UBP model: the platform fee, which makes the UBP a 2-part tariff. The platform fee instant boosts the ACV ad can be tailored per customer segment

One other thought on UBP. Some customers fear the sticker shock of dramatic usage in the first billing period. To offset this risk, many sales teams cap the charge in the first billing period to ensure customers who sign up and use substantially more of a service don’t suffer sticker shock when the first bill arrives.

Thanks to Barry McCardel for the inspiration on this post.

Despite the four-month bearish price action, institutions continue to pile drive bitcoin, which might have scared away retail leverage traders. This is because institutions are focusing on longer-term horizons and see the potential for big profits in BTC’s growth over time. The recent large outflow of coins from the U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase is evident, according to blockchain analytics firm Glassnode. Related Reading | 82% Of Bitcoin Short-Term Holder Supply Now In Loss, Capitulation Ahead? The recent highly volatile markets have sent bitcoin prices tumbling, with a total of 31,130 bitcoin leaving Coinbase last week. This is the highest single-week outflow since 2017, data tracked by Glassnode. In a weekly newsletter published Monday, Glassnode said;  Large outflows like this one are actually part of a consistent trend in the Coinbase balance, which has been stair-stepping downwards over the last two years. As the largest exchange by BTC balance, and a preferred venue for U.S.-based institutions, this further supports the adoption of bitcoin as a macro asset by larger institutions. The crypto markets have experienced drought over the past week. The Nasdaq-listed exchange’s holding in bitcoin has dropped a four-year low of 649,500 BTC for just the second time since 2018. In addition, the amount of bitcoins held by all centralized exchanges has decreased to 2,519,403 BTC, the lowest number since November 2018. Withdrawal Bitcoins Moved To Inactive Wallets The Coinbase withdrawal may be driving up the price of Bitcoin. The declining exchange balance means fewer coins are available for liquidations on exchanges, which could lead to an increase in demand and push prices higher still – especially since those withdrawals have moved into largely inactive wallets. Additionally, Glassnode said; If we look at the Illiquid Supply Shock Ratio (ISSR), we can see a significant uptick this week. Suggesting that these withdrawn coins have been moved into a wallet with little-to-no history of spending. The ISSR is on an upwards trend, suggesting that these withdrawn coins transferred into a wallet with little-to-no history of spending. Related Reading | Bitcoin Detractor Peter Schiff Lays On What Will Trigger Bitcoin Recovery The current amount of supply held in Illiquid wallets is 3.2x larger than Liquid and Highly-Liquid combined. Meaning that many coins are still trapped there despite the recent bear market conditions. A similar metric to what we saw during the 2018 – 2020’s bear market. Major cryptocurrencies registered mostly small losses on Monday. As the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs voted down a bill. That bill could have outlawed proof-of-work in EU territory. The markets were volatile yesterday as investors waited to hear what the Federal Reserve would do with today’s policy meeting. The NASDAQ100 fell 2%, while SPX500 Index dropped 0.75%. DJ30 closed flat following these declines in stock prices.  The crypto market experienced a mild correction, with Ethereum, BNB, Solana, and XRP losing 2%. Bitcoin also fell slightly 1.6% in value and trading under $40,000 at the time of writing. Featured image from Flickr, chart from Tradingview.com  

After a flat week for the market, crypto prices are climbing again with Bitcoin and Ethereum both up today.

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First launching on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection finally arrives on Nintendo Switch. Bundling AC2, Brotherhood and Revelations, we should be getting a good experience here: after all, we've already seen later, more advanced series entries on Nintendo's hybrid in the form of AC3, Black Flag and Rogue. Low quality, compressed audio marred these ports, along with a bunch of bugs in AC3 - so has Ubisoft learned from its mistakes or are these early Assassin's Creed titles best enjoyed elsewhere?

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