Ask HN: People selling both SaaS and on-prem, what's the price difference?

I'm curious to get a sense of the relative price difference for the same software when sold as SAAS and on-prem. DevOps tools are the most relevant here, but I'd be curious about any pricing comparisons.

8 points | by _false 522 days ago

3 comments

  • ezekg 522 days ago
    My company has 3 offerings:

    - Cloud SaaS: limited free tier, standard tiers $49-799/mo, enterprise tiers $15,990+/yr.

    - On-prem CE: free, limited feature set, no support guarantees.

    - On-prem EE: $9,990/yr, additional features, dedicated support.

    • _false 521 days ago
      Interesting to see that on-prem starts lower than enterprise tier. What's the reason for that, as I'd assume any on prem would be more costly to provide?
      • ezekg 521 days ago
        It's less expensive because it's actually less costly for me to support on-prem vs cloud, so I want to incentivize on-prem when possible. I also don't want to price out non-enterprises (i.e. those on the standard cloud tiers). So it's a balancing act between standard and enterprise pricing, and so far the current pricing is working well for both.

        Why do you think on-prem would be more costly than cloud? Just curious.

        • HenryBemis 519 days ago
          I assume the extra hoops for when you need to support 'the thing'. When you host 'the thing' you are fully aware of OS, versions, updates/upgrades/patches (both functional and security), you are aware of the number of users, Profiles (they didn't go on to create the profile PizzaAuditorBurger with FULL-ADMIN-on-the-whole-Galaxy and at the same time disable every audit log ever made).

          Basically it's about control.

          Depending on the client and the type of SaaS you are offering it may create the headache for a SOC2/PCI-DSS compliance/HIPAA/etc reports/compliance/etc. While if they host it, then it's their problem :)

          So.. Cloud.. you got headaches but control the narrative, version, etc. On-prem.. they got headaches but you can charge them more hours when supporting.

          (I once worked on a Programme for a mega-big company that was closing down its data centers and moving assets on a managed private cloud - I was the Compliance Lead for that project)(it involved SOX, GDPR, and the promise of 2700x)(together with the mandatory updates because some on-prem apps haven't been updated for YEARS and were still running on Win2000)(which Win2000 have the most beautiful desktop background color ever-ever-ever)(but still.. we're talking that this happened after 2015)

          EDIT: Also.. if anyone is looking to hide someone in Europe to run their SOX, GRC, Internal Controls Monitoring.. I am looking (and I know the tricks to get compliance actually happen - with minimal pain)

          • ezekg 519 days ago
            Granted I haven't been offering a self-hosted option for that long, but I feel like Docker makes a lot of these things moot. If a customer fails to upgrade, that's on them and can potentially lead to a loss of support if they fall out of LTS.
      • nik736 521 days ago
        Apart from the support, onprem is basically free as no infra costs. Why would it be more costly?
  • rubyissimo 520 days ago
    Tools in my space are usually 5-10x.

    Letting people be on-prem kills your upside for NRR. You need to have something compensating.

  • flappyeagle 519 days ago
    2x