Should you charge per seat, per use, or per outcome?
Charge for the thing that grows when your customer gets more out of your product. That's the core of choosing a pricing model, and it's why the same model can be right for one company and wrong for its neighbor. Most small companies don't choose this way. They copy the model of the best-known competitor, or they pick per-seat pricing because it's the familiar default for software.
The three common models charge for different things:
- Per seat charges for each person who uses the product. It works when every extra user gets real value, as with a team chat or design tool. It works poorly when one or two people do the work for a whole company, because a large customer pays the same as a small one.
- Per use charges for volume, such as messages sent, records processed, or gigabytes stored. It tracks value closely and covers your costs when each use costs you money. The tradeoff is that bills change month to month, which makes some buyers nervous.
- Per outcome charges for a result, such as a resolved support ticket or a booked meeting. Intercom, for example, charges per outcome for its Fin AI agent. Outcome pricing is easy to justify, because the customer only pays when the product delivers. It only works when the outcome is easy to count and clearly caused by your product.
Many companies end up with a mix. A subscription might include a set amount of usage, with extra usage billed on top. A plan might charge per location and include unlimited seats.
A pricing model can go wrong in two directions. If the price doesn't grow as customers grow, you leave money on the table with your biggest accounts. If the price is hard to predict, or it rises every time a customer uses the product more, buyers hesitate to sign or quietly use less. Getting it right takes research most teams skip: finding out what customers value, seeing how the market already charges, and running the numbers for real customers. That's good work for an AI agent, because it's careful gathering and comparison of evidence, and it needs to be done again whenever the product or the market changes.
Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Here's how it helps you choose how to charge.
How Kite chooses a pricing model
Kite starts with what it learned about your business when you signed up. Its research records what you sell, who buys it, what you charge today, and who your competitors are. That gives Kite your current model before it compares anything.
From there, Kite works out what your customers actually get value from, using your customer research, reviews, and case studies. It reads how each competitor charges and how their pricing has changed over the past few years. Then it calculates what your customers would pay under each model you're considering, and it recommends a model, the unit you'd charge by, and the points where customers should move up a plan.
Once you decide, Kite updates your pricing page, your plan descriptions, and your upgrade prompts. It records the decision and the reasoning in your team's knowledge base, and it checks whether the model is working when you review your pricing next.
- What do your customers actually pay you for?
- How does your market charge today?
- Should you choose usage-based or subscription pricing?
- What should trigger a customer to upgrade?
- Put the new model on your pricing page
- Check whether the model is working
What do your customers actually pay you for?
The right pricing unit is the thing your customers would say they're buying. Kite looks for that unit first, because every other part of the decision depends on it.
Kite reads what your customers say about your product. Your case studies show which results you're proud of. Public reviews of your product and your competitors' products show what buyers praise and what they complain about paying for. Your team's knowledge base holds the customer research Kite gathered when you signed up, including who your best customers are and why they chose you.
The answer is often not the unit you charge by today. Say you sell appointment reminders to medical clinics and charge $40 per user. A clinic's front desk might have two users whether the clinic has three doctors or thirty, so both clinics pay $80 a month. But the larger clinic sends ten times as many reminders and avoids ten times as many missed appointments. What the clinic is really paying for is fewer no-shows, and that grows with the number of doctors, not the number of front-desk logins.
Kite also asks you about the things only you know. Those include what each customer costs you to serve, whether your costs rise with usage, and what your sales conversations sound like when price comes up.
How does your market charge today?
Kite reads each competitor's pricing page and records what it charges by, what each plan includes, and where its upgrade points fall. Buyers compare you with these companies, so your model needs to make sense next to theirs, even when you decide to charge differently.
Kite can read pricing pages that only load their prices in the browser, and it saves each competitor's pricing in your knowledge base with the date and the source. It also reads archived versions of each pricing page to see how the competitor's pricing has changed. A competitor that switched from per-seat to usage pricing and kept it for two years has learned something about its buyers. A competitor that tried usage pricing and went back to plans has learned something too.
The pattern across competitors is often the most useful finding. If every competitor charges per seat and buyers in reviews complain about paying for people who barely log in, a different unit could become your advantage. If every competitor charges per location, buyers expect it, and charging per seat would make you hard to compare.
Related use cases
- Compare your pricing with your competitors': See what each competitor would charge a customer like yours and how your pricing page compares with theirs.
- Track competitors' pricing changes Coming soon Find out when a competitor changes its prices or plans, with a suggested response.
Should you choose usage-based or subscription pricing?
Choose usage-based pricing when your value and your costs both grow with volume, and choose a subscription when buyers need a predictable bill more than they need a precise one. Kite weighs those two needs for your business, then shows you what each model would cost the customers you actually have.
The calculation is what turns a debate into a decision. Kite picks the customer sizes that matter from your knowledge base, or from your billing data if you connect Stripe, and prices each one under every model you're considering. Back to the clinic example:
- Under the current model, at $40 per user, a three-doctor clinic and a thirty-doctor clinic each pay $80 a month.
- At $1 per reminder sent, the small clinic might pay $150 a month and the large one $1,500, but both bills would change every month, and clinics might start sending fewer reminders to save money.
- At $15 per doctor, with reminders included, the small clinic pays $45 and the large one pays $450. The price grows with the value, and each clinic knows its bill before it signs.
In that example, Kite would likely recommend charging per doctor. The small clinic pays less than it does today, which makes the product easier to buy. The large clinic pays more, but it's paying for the result it gets. And nobody has a reason to use the product less.
Kite also checks the model against how you sell. A product sold through a self-serve signup needs a price a buyer can work out alone in a minute. A product sold through sales calls can support a model with more parts, because someone is there to explain it. When a number in the calculation is an estimate, such as how many reminders a typical clinic sends, Kite says so and shows how the answer changes if the estimate is wrong.
Related use cases
- Research what customers are willing to pay Coming soon Survey your customers and use their answers to set the price point for the model you choose.
What should trigger a customer to upgrade?
A customer should move to a higher plan when they've grown, not when they've been blocked. Kite recommends upgrade triggers that customers reach because the product is working for them.
Good upgrade triggers come in two kinds. The first is a limit on the unit you charge by, set where a growing customer naturally crosses it. In the clinic example, the first plan might cover up to five doctors, so a practice that hires its sixth doctor moves up. The second is a feature that only larger organizations need, such as single sign-on, admin controls, audit logs, or support for several locations. A small clinic never misses those features, and a hospital group won't buy without them.
Kite places the limits using the customers you have. If you connect Stripe, Kite reads which plan each customer is on and how many seats or units they pay for. If most of your customers have one to four doctors, a limit of five lets them grow before they need to upgrade. If you connect PostHog, Kite can also see how much each account uses the product, which shows where customers start to get stuck.
Kite also flags upgrade triggers that work against you. A limit so low that new customers reach it in their first week pushes them to upgrade before they've seen the value. A feature every customer needs on day one, hidden in the top plan, makes your entry price look like a trick. And every pricing page needs somewhere for your largest customers to go, even if that's a plan with a "contact us" button.
Put the new model on your pricing page
Once you've decided how to charge, Kite rewrites everything that presents the price. You set the new prices in your billing system, and Kite makes sure buyers understand them.
Kite rewrites your pricing page around the new unit, so a buyer can tell what they'll pay at their size. It writes plan descriptions that name the kind of customer each plan is for, such as "for single-location practices," which helps buyers find their plan at a glance. It also writes the upgrade prompts customers see inside your product when they approach a limit, and the email that tells existing customers what's changing and when.
On a website Kite hosts, it publishes the new pricing page after you approve it. If your site runs on Webflow, Contentful, Sanity, Storyblok, or self-hosted Payload, Kite updates the content through your connected account. On a Kite-hosted site, Kite can also test two versions of the pricing page, splitting visitors between them and measuring which one brings more signups before you make the winner permanent.
Related use cases
- Build a clear pricing page: Make each plan, its price, and the path to sales obvious to buyers.
- Write pricing plans for each type of buyer: Give each plan a description that tells buyers who it's for.
Check whether the model is working
A pricing model is a decision you revisit, because your product, your customers, and your competitors keep changing. Kite records the model you chose, the evidence behind it, and what you expected to happen in your team's knowledge base, so the next review starts from your reasoning instead of from memory.
When you review your pricing, Kite compares the results with what you expected. It checks signups and conversions on your pricing page with its built-in analytics or your connected analytics. With Stripe connected, it checks how many customers moved up a plan and which limits they crossed. It also rereads your competitors' pricing to see whether the market has moved since you decided.
You can ask Kite to run that review on a schedule, such as every quarter or every year. Each review ends in a recorded decision, even when the decision is to leave pricing alone, so you always know when you last looked and what you concluded.
Related use cases
- Review your pricing on a regular schedule Coming soon Run a pricing review each quarter or year that ends in a recorded decision.
What you get
A pricing unit recommendation
The unit Kite recommends you charge by, with the evidence from your customers, your reviews, and your case studies that supports it.
A record of how your market charges
Each competitor's pricing unit, plans, and upgrade points, plus how their pricing has changed over time, saved in your knowledge base with dates and sources.
A side-by-side calculation
What your typical customers would pay under each model you're considering, with every estimate marked and the effect of a wrong estimate shown.
Upgrade triggers
The limits and features that should move customers to a higher plan, placed using the customers you actually have.
The work itself
A rewritten pricing page, plan descriptions, in-product upgrade prompts, and the email to existing customers, published or delivered once you approve them.
A decision record and a review
Your reasoning saved in the knowledge base, and a scheduled review that checks whether the model is working.
How to get started
Tell Kite what you're unsure about in plain language. You might say, "Should we charge per seat or per use?" or "Our biggest customers pay the same as our smallest. How should we charge instead?" or "What should make a customer upgrade from our starter plan?" You can work with Kite in the Kite web app or in Slack.
Kite replies with the competitors it plans to read and the customer sizes it plans to price for, and it asks you the questions only you can answer, such as what each customer costs you to serve. Adjust its lists, and Kite comes back with the comparison and its recommendation. If you want to share the analysis with a cofounder, ask Kite to publish it as a report with charts and tables.
You don't need to connect anything to get a recommendation, because Kite's built-in research reads competitors' live and archived pricing pages and public reviews. Connect Stripe when you want Kite to price the customers you actually have, and connect PostHog when you want it to see how much each account uses your product. Kite asks for your approval before it publishes any change to your pricing page.
Integrations used to choose a pricing model
Kite's built-in research covers the market side of the decision, so you can get a recommendation on your first day. It reads competitors' pricing pages as they are today and as they looked in the past, and it gathers what customers say about pricing in public reviews. Your connected accounts add your own customers to the calculation.
Price the customers you actually have
Kite reads your customers, subscriptions, and plans, so it can see how many customers sit on each plan and how many seats or units they pay for. It uses that to price real customers under each model and to place upgrade limits where your customers will grow into them.
Kite reads the events your product records, so it can see how much each account uses the product and which features larger customers rely on. That shows which unit tracks value and where customers reach a limit.
Publish the new pricing
Common questions
How should an AI product charge when every use costs money?
Charge in a way that keeps your price above your cost on every customer, which usually means some form of usage pricing. A flat subscription works for an AI product only when typical usage is predictable and your heaviest users still leave you a margin. Many AI products use a subscription that includes a set amount of usage, often as credits, and charge for usage beyond that. Kite asks what each use costs you, checks how competitors with similar costs charge, and calculates whether your heaviest customers would still be profitable under each model.
How do I move existing customers to a new pricing model?
Give existing customers notice, a clear explanation of what changes for them, and a reason the change is fair. Many companies keep current customers on their old price for a set period, such as six or twelve months, before moving them. Kite calculates which existing customers would pay more and which would pay less under the new model, so you know who to talk to first. It then drafts the announcement email and the pricing page note that explains the change.
How do I know if I'm leaving money on the table?
Look at whether your largest customers pay much more than your smallest ones. If a customer who gets ten times the value pays about the same price, your model isn't capturing that value. Other signs include customers who never reach a limit on any plan, and buyers who sign up for your top plan without asking about price. Kite checks for these signs in your billing data when you connect Stripe, asks you what large buyers say when price comes up, and compares your top plan with what competitors charge their largest customers.
Can Kite set my prices in Stripe?
Kite recommends the model, the unit, and the upgrade points, and it shows what each customer would pay. You set the final prices in Stripe or whatever billing system you use, because pricing is a decision with consequences for your revenue and your customers. Kite then updates the pricing page, the plan descriptions, and the upgrade prompts to match. For real examples of how other software companies charge, see SaaS Pricing Models: Real Examples of Per-Seat, Usage, and Outcome Pricing Coming soon .