Simplify the pricing page

[corywatilo]

The pricing page has grown in complexity over time. So, time to simplify!

Rather than splitting pricing between deployment type (Cloud and self-host), this cuts it by use case: Standard features or enterprise features

Wireframe prototype (where you can tab between Standard/Enterprise)

This also hides the pricing breakdowns under the "Up to 90% discount" link.

Pricing for standard feature set

Enterprise pricing

Things I'm on the fence about:

• Having a plan selected means there's only one CTA. (I had started with a selected state because I was building a wizard earlier, where clicking an option changed multiple things on the page.) But I left it in the single selected plan since we want to drive users toward Cloud. (Though it might not be clear you can select self-host.)
• Pricing feels hard(er) to find with the calculator at the top, though I felt the calculator should come first if we're showing an estimate inline.
• I don't love that you have to tab between to see anything. I'd prefer to see everything in one view, but that also increases the complexity.
• Not convinced this is the most seamless way to combine pricing and a calculator, so might go back to the wizard approach again

[tiina303]

I can't do wireframes, but what about sth like this: I feel like I'd want to get an overview of prices and features to see on the same page without needing to tab (maybe we can drop / generalize some of the standard features so it doesn't look that cluttered ... less is more ;) ):

[corywatilo]

Update

• This wizard helps you choose which edition is right for you. Initially it focuses entirely on Cloud, but the calculator lets you customize your options which let you learn about self-hosting and enterprise options. (Comprehensive plans comparison table is still available further down the page)
• I still need to wire:
  • Modals for self-host (i) and enterprise (i) details
  • Example of full event pricing breakdown when expanded (will look like what we have today)
  • Example of how plan name/description and pricing changes when selecting self-hosted or enterprise
• Eventually will need to have another pass on the full comparison chart since a lot has changed

[andyvan-ph]

I like this latest version a lot. It really feels a bit more like buying a consumer good and I think it's important to have a couple of really clear, unambiguous CTAs.

A couple of thoughts:

• I think we should avoid using the phrase "community support" in reference to self-serve plans. We're still talking to potential paying customers and I think this could put them off, and ultimately it's still us providing the majority of support.

• Customer success (paging @simfish85 & @camerondeleone) have mentioned how many customers are unsure how many events they'll need. We created this blog post as a stop gap to a future better solution. It's probably beyond the scope of this work to solve this problem as well, but some kind of tooltip / link to that blog post would be good.

• This is probably a good time to sort out of the whole Cloud vs Self-Host and Enterprise vs non-Enterprise pricing structure as still quite confusing. Enterprise isn't $300 + per event, the $300 is just a flat fee so it doesn't start at $0, and this comparison would make it seem like Enterprise / self-hosting is cheaper, which I believe we want to avoid.

• Rather than 'Do you need enterprise features?' perhaps we add a couple of questions, all of which select Enterprise when answered 'Yes'. Something like:

  • Do you need single sign-on?
  • Do you need to deployment support? (if they select 'yes' to self-host)
  • Do you need dedicated support? (If they select 'no' to self-host)
  • Do you need project permissions?

[tiina303]

+1 the latest is looking good :)
Based on discussion here https://posthog.slack.com/archives/C02E3BKC78F/p1656020742623639?thread_ts=1656007246.988119&cid=C02E3BKC78F - Self-hosted enterprise should only have: deployment support from those. I'd suggest moving sql access under there too (I think it's clearer if it's not somewhere separately with an asterisk). Project permissions I believe are available on enterprise cloud too - aren't they?

[kappa90]

+1 to the latest version. Would be great to have a version of this in the product, what do you think about it?

[simfish85]

This looks great - one thing to request, can we persist the event volume as people select the different event options? (That happens today as you switch between Cloud/Enterprise and Scale/Enterprise) This will be useful for comparisons prior to having a full breakdown view.

[joethreepwood]

• I think we should avoid using the phrase "community support" in reference to self-serve plans. We're still talking to potential paying customers and I think this could put them off, and ultimately it's still us providing the majority of support.

I'd love to hear more Support Hero & CS thoughts on this point, because there's a really critical balance we need to strike between letting people know:

a) That we won't provide dedicated support, we don't have any SLAs for support and they can't/shouldn't rely on us
b) But there is a Slack group where they can ask for help (and, in reality, we will help them there)

I see the argument for removing 'Community Support' from the list, because it can set off alarm bells. However, I worry that if we didn't include this then users would have the base expectation that we provide some sort of support.

[charlescook-ph]

Strong plus 1 for keeping a reference to 'community support' in there, as @marcushyett-ph 's research on word of mouth showed the quality of our support was one of the top reasons why people loved PostHog.

[andyvan-ph]

Strong plus 1 for keeping a reference to 'community support' in there, as @marcushyett-ph 's research on word of mouth showed the quality of our support was one of the top reasons why people loved PostHog.

Right, but isn't that because it's not "community" driven by provided by us in the community Slack? Maybe I'm overthinking it as we already use this messaging, it just seems to me we're underselling what people actually get.

[joethreepwood]

Strong plus 1 for keeping a reference to 'community support' in there, as @marcushyett-ph 's research on word of mouth showed the quality of our support was one of the top reasons why people loved PostHog.

This is sort of why I'm asking though, because if it's the quality of our support and we're saying we only offer community support then we're potentially underselling ourselves as Andy says.

[corywatilo]

Here's a completed prototype of this flow* (Follow instructions below for best results)

*Some modal content might need to change, but we can finalize when we have a PR, so long as the info hierarchy stays in tact

1. Choose self-host
2. Yes, choose enterprise
3. Decide you want to see the full pricing breakdown
4. Now clarify what "self-hosting" means (click the (i))
5. Close that modal, and now do the same for enterprise
6. Give a thumbs up to this comment and close the tab

[simfish85]

@corywatilo design looks good. One minor edit - we charge a minimum of $300 (Cloud Enterprise) and $450 (Enterprise) a month so it's not strictly true to say first million events free per month for all editions (you could call out Standard editions instead)

[corywatilo]

I'm trying to reduce the amount of having to call things out depending on which plan. Either way you run it, you're not billed per event for the first 1m. Is there a better way to say that?

I had written "First 1 million events are included every month", but that's ambiguous for the self-serve plans.

I could replace Free for Included in the breakdown:

Then we just need to figure out the subtitle.

Before:

Pay per tracked event, get access to all features. First 1 million events are free every month.

After (feels rough):

All plans come with all features. Just pay per tracked event (after 1 million events/mo).

[simfish85]

Why not

Pay per tracked event, get access to all features. First 1 million events are included every month.

Also just noticed that the Self-Host Self-Serve has a minimum of $300 - this is equivalent to our current Scale which starts at $0. $300/mo is the minimum for Cloud Enterprise

[corywatilo]

Yep that's my bad - typo. Fixed in proto. Alright we'll roll with that subtitle for now.

[corywatilo]

Hi-fi prototype! (Sorry to @smallbrownbike in advance, as I went a little overboard... 😬)

• The only (i) you can currently click is the self-hosting option, which appears as a side pane modal
• Note for FAQ: We can build these out to look like Squeak! questions instead of making modifications in Squeak! to actually support this UI. (Eg: Hide person's name, remove date stamp, option to hide "Thread closed" text, and implement the FAQ flag functionality.)
• Search can just be a JS/client-side filter of the text below, since we only want to search the results below, not a database-wide Squeak! search

Click the link above for the full page. Here's a preview:

[andyvan-ph]

I really like the Questions section here. Massive improvement on the current expanding boxes.