Vertice, a leading SaaS purchasing and spend management platform, released the industry’s most complete pricing guide into project collaboration software.
A survey by Gartner found that, between 2019 and 2021, there was a 44% increase in the use of collaboration SaaS tools. With this increase in usage, 80% of vendors have increased their list pricing since 2019 — by an average of 10% annually — making it even more crucial to find the best fit for your SaaS stack at the best price.
However, transparency remains a key challenge in the SaaS purchasing process. With low visibility into pricing and tool usage along with limited negotiation bandwidth, businesses are overpaying for SaaS products by between 20-30% on average.
While some vendors publish their pricing directly onto their websites or through certain third parties, many SaaS companies intentionally keep their pricing hidden. Research shows that only 45% of vendors list pricing online, while 55% of vendors obscure pricing from potential customers. Vertice aims to showcase a better way to purchase and manage SaaS.
“By making pricing unclear and difficult to understand, vendors often hold the most negotiation leverage, putting customers at a disadvantage since they are not able to compare pricing across a variety of vendors. With a clearer understanding of a vendor’s pricing, SaaS buyers are able to gain back negotiation bandwidth and, most likely, secure a better deal.” Said Eldar Tuvey, CEO and founder of Vertice.
The Vertice Pricing Clarity score aims to provide business leaders with insight into how a vendor compares with its peers in terms of pricing simplicity, transparency and parity. For each vendor, Vertice has also analysed average discounting — the aggregate price discount that customers pay compared with list pricing.
Below is the Vertice Pricing Clarity Grid for seven popular vendors in the Project Collaboration Software sector.
Across the seven leading vendors in project collaboration, businesses that choose to negotiate pricing are paying an average of $15.22 per month per user, securing an average discount of 22% off of list price. Data shows that businesses have been able to secure discounts in the range of 15-34%.
Joel Windels, Vice President of Marketing at Vertice stated “Vertice’s pricing guide aims to eliminate the inefficiencies that plague the SaaS industry. Vertice uses technology, intelligent data analysis, and real updates to give everyone the tools, resources, and information they need to get the best deal on any contract. By simplifying the entire SaaS purchasing process, this allows for the freeing of your finance and procurement teams to focus on your core business. As a result, projects run smoother; progress moves faster, and projects are completed on time and on budget.”
Methodology
Pricing breakdown
There can be stark differences between the list prices of software and what companies are actually paying for them. Below Vertice have compiled real pricing and discounting data for seven G2 leaders in the project collaboration software category. Each rating is based on a combination of publicly available vendor pricing information and data from the Vertice database. Factoring each rating into the pricing clarity formula, Vertice has generated a corresponding Price Clarity Score to aid businesses in securing the best pricing.
Vertice Pricing Ratings
From extensive pricing data from the Vertice database, they have developed three distinct pricing ratings for each vendor:
- Simplicity is rated on how easy and intuitive pricing is to understand. Parameters: Intuitive, low number of tiers, fixed for longer terms, minimal overages.
- Transparency is rated on if pricing is published clearly and explicitly on vendor websites. Parameters: based directly on usage, no hidden add-ons, no additional fees, professional services and opaque set up fees.
- Parity is rated on how consistent pricing is across similar customer profiles. Parameters: low pricing variability even across verticals, regions, currencies and company size. Standardised and low variance.
Vertice’s database consists of over 13,000 SaaS vendors across more than 100 countries, with detailed product information and analytics on the most popular applications. They’ve amassed tens of thousands of price points from multiple sources. The team at Vertice have negotiated over 10,000 contracts with a total value exceeding $300 million for both fast-growing tech companies and Fortune 500 multinationals.
Vertice is committed to working only on behalf of the buyer, enabling them to remain independent of SaaS vendors and be 100% aligned with the interests of finance and IT teams at renewal. It’s about time that corporate buyers are equally represented by a professional partner — one that is backed by rich data and adheres to a rigorous purchasing methodology and framework.
About Vertice:
The Vertice SaaS purchasing platform spans procurement through to approvals, enabling finance leaders to gain more control, efficiency and flexibility.
For more information, please visit: https://www.vertice.one