Plans
Plans are used to manage who can subscribe, what services are offered and and what price. A product can have any number of plans.
Tiers
Tiers define the rules that govern when and if a customer can subscribe, switch and cancel plans. Each plan must be assigned a tier and this assignment cannot be changed. Every product has their own set of tiers which must be configured before the first plan is created. The following table provides a list of tiers that are common for SaaS products.
| Tier | Free | Trial | Paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Requires payment method | No | No | Yes |
| One-time subscription | No | Yes | No |
| Number of renewals | Zero | Zero | Unlimited |
| Cancellation behavior | Anytime | Anytime | End of period |
Dimensions
Plans consist of dimensions which define the cost structure and billing rules. Each dimension can have separate billing periods and usage types. This means that a customer that is subscribed to a plan with multiple dimensions, could end up receiving multiple invoices if the billing periods don't align.
Usage Types
The usage type of a dimension can either be metered or licensed. Plans can be composed of a combination of licensed and metered dimensions. For example, a plan charges a customer a fixed fee of USD 100 per month for up to 10 users and charges USD 0.10 for any search operations after the first 1,000 search operations would be modeled like this:
- Dimension: Users
- Usage Type: Licensed
- Limit: 10
- First Tier:
- Price per unit: 0 USD
- Fixed charge: 100 USD
- Dimension: Searches
- Usage Type: Metered
- Pricing model: Graduated pricing
- First Tier:
- Volume: 1,000
- Price per unit: 0 USD
- Fixed charge: 0 USD
- Second Tier:
- Volume: Unlimited
- Price per unit: 0.10 USD
- Fixed charge: 0 USD
| Usage Type | Metered | Licensed |
|---|---|---|
| Primarily used for | Consumables (e.g. compute, storage) | User licenses |
| Billed at | End of billing period | Beginning of billing period |
| Prorations | No | Yes |
| Limits | Yes | Yes |
| Tiered pricing | Yes (graduated and volume) | Yes (graduated and volume) |
Limits
Each plan dimension can have a limit on the quantity that can be consumed. For licensed dimensions, the limit refers to the number of users on a subscription. When the limit is reached, users will not able to join a subscription until other users have been removed. For metered dimensions, the limit refers to the number of units of usage. The metering service will return an error when the limit is reached.
We recommend to always define a limit, both for licensed and metered dimensions, even if the product is promoted as being unlimited. The limit can be used to prevent abuse of the service and protect your application from unexpected usage.