Thinking about pricing, combining the (
Thinking about pricing, combining the (now legacy) rental model with PPR/PPE in the shape of a minimal monthly spend would be a key revenue unlock. I’d like to get the community’s thoughts on this.
This model works really well for me on Apify’s competitors, and I don’t think I’ll ever hit similar revenue numbers on Apify without a minimum spend per user.
Example from a competitor:
-Pricing starts at $10 for 1,000 events. After that, there are overages.
How this could look on Apify:
- An actor can be set to PPE pricing, but he user always starts with $10/month, which includes 1,000 events. The $10 kicks in for the first paid request every month. “Overages” would follow the PPE pricing.
Fit with current plans:
- Apify could keep the $39 / $199 / $999 pricing.
- The free $5 plan stays without a minimum spend (basically a trial).
- Example: on the $199 plan, the minimum spend could still be $10 but for 2,000 events (actor decides this).
12 Replies
Great feedback, this is what we also learned from interviews, we are already brainstorming about it internally.
Thanks, yeah it's a bit difficult because you're setting the $39/$199/$999 yourselves.
Ideally I'd have full freedom to change this myself but I understand that's fundamental, so I think something like I'd suggested could be a good comprimise.
An elegant, easy to understand solution from UX perspective could be, for example, to change the pricing on the screenshot to: $12/2000 jobs, or $18/3000 jobs and that $12 or $18 would be the minimum each month.
So instead of pricing per 1,000 the actor could set this variable themselves and set it as the minimum price. With different variables for the $39/$199/$999 tiers
I have one actor currently at $25/1,000 events. For that one I could stick to $25/1,000 and the minimum would be $25
@Strijdhagen just advanced to level 4! Thanks for your contributions! 🎉
You can already do that using this example - https://apify.com/lukaskrivka/rental-as-ppe-example
The problem is the sudden $10 charge might be surprising to users
I’m thinking of something similar to the current pay-per-event model, but instead of you applying your discounts there, the developer could set up their own subscription. In other words, instead of “Free,” it would make more sense to have “Pay as you go” (so free users or those who don’t want a subscription could still use it, but at a higher cost), and with a subscription there would be more discounts and benefits.
So it’s similar, except that instead of having Bronze, Silver, and Gold discounts listed there, it would be replaced with another subscription set by the developer, with the price shown below — or something along those lines. Developers would still apply the pricing based on the Bronze, Silver, and Gold discount levels, but without actually displaying them there. I believe this kind of pricing model could even replace the rental, pay-per-usage, and pay-per-result models, though I’m not sure how much backend work that would require.
Yeah that's the thing, UX is everything.
The current pricing details are already quite poor, so I'd like to see Apify improve that first
I like it but double subscriptions might be confusing.
I'd like Apify to drop their subscriptions all together and for us to fully set our own pricing but doubt that's going to happen
ok, but think about it: the same reason you want a subscription with limits is the same reason it benefits Apify too recurring and predictable revenue. The actor’s subscription would work just like the rental model, using the user’s plan credits, so it shouldn’t be that complicated since that model is already in place. If Apify removed their own subscription, it would actually be a loss for them, because I believe most users don’t even spend 50% of their credits. And the same thing happens in the SaaS model in general: most customers rarely use up all the credits included in their subscriptions.
I think we're agreeing here. We need some kind of subscription, otherwise it makes no sense to prioritize Apify as a platform