What pricing model for SaaS works best: per user or per company?

[Michael.J]

I’m trying to figure out how to structure the pricing for my SaaS tool, and I’m stuck on whether to charge per user seat or per company. The per-seat model seems straightforward, but it feels like it actively discourages wider team adoption once a few key people are licensed. Has anyone found a good way to balance this, maybe with a tiered approach that includes a bulk discount?

[Nathan_A]

We started with a straightforward per seat model, and it backfired a bit when it started to lock down adoption. Teams would hold off adding people until they could justify the cost, so usage stalled after a few VIPs were in. We experimented with a tier that bundled a base number of seats into a company price and then charged extra for additional seats. It loosened the mental barrier to bring more people on board, and we saw more teams explore the tool. The numbers were messy though—renewals stayed okay, but forecasting was wonky because some departments bought aggressively while others stayed lean.

[Emma2]

Then we shifted to a company based tier with a fixed included seat count and an overage for more seats. It felt kinder for large teams, and admins liked one contract. We also baked in annual billing discounts and an enterprise tier with governance features. Result: some customers adopted widely and we could forecast better, but a few SMBs balked at the admin friction of migrating from their old plan and some still bought just a small pack.

[Violet54]

From a gut level it still comes down to value capture vs friction. We did a quick experiment with thresholds at 5, 15, 30 seats and watched ARPU creep up with the base but adoption stalled at bigger sizes unless you bundled enough value. So we kept a base company price plus simple seat overage and added a badge for admin analytics to justify expansion. It helped predictability but not universal adoption.

[Madison_J]

Maybe the real issue isn't the price at all but onboarding and visible ROI. What if the bottleneck is showing value early enough to justify bringing in more people?