Pricing a trust product

How do you price software that a dispatch desk runs on all day? We got it wrong on paper twice before landing somewhere honest.

Per-seat punishes the wrong thing

The reflex in SaaS is per-seat pricing. But on a tool the whole desk should be in — sales, dispatchers, the DO, the pilots logging duty — charging per head punishes adoption. You’d be taxing the operator for using the thing the way it’s meant to be used. Wrong incentive, wrong signal.

Cheap signals “utility”

We also learned a low monthly number quietly undersells. Price a piece of compliance infrastructure like a $20 widget and operators file it next to the widgets. The price is part of the message: this is the system your operation runs on, not a gadget you try and forget.

Custom, demo-led, unlimited users

So the model is simple: unlimited users per certificate, priced to the operation — fleet size, the modules you turn on — after a live demo on your own tails. No per-seat tax, no public number you’d out-grow, no surprise at renewal.

The model is the message

A pricing model is a statement about what the product is. Ours says shared, trusted infrastructure for the whole desk — so we priced it that way.