Just wondering: credits have been a goto system for trial/freemium offerings in SaaS for years. What is the difference in this case?
Also my educated guess is they are simply creating a back-to-back system that their AI LLM provider has implemented for them. Which is easy to account for their business.
In my experience, credit models aren't as common for project management tools. Also thought it was interesting in the context of their existing seat model, and curious to see the interplay between those two models going forward.
I'm not familiar with back-to-back systems, but would love to learn more 🙂
Thanks Rob, Ah ok right. It’s not a system perse, but a way of making sure your payment system aligns with what you pay for service that your platform purchases and usage scales in the same way for that service. In order to make sure you don’t run financial risk on usage of your platform. I.e. your platform users scaling at a too low pricepoint or in different price brackets than what you pay to your supplier.
Great questions. I'd be curious if they have "budgeting" ability for different teams to have their own limits. Given how new this is, I'd doubt it, but would imagine that's coming. I know that's something the Metronome team offers, and would be huge here.
I think when the limit is reached only active automations will keep going, and there's no charge for those. But if the team wants to start a new automation, they would have to add more credits.
Great post. I'm curious what your thoughts are on the role of feature packaging in a model where credits are the primary pricing metric. If a key objective is to encourage experimentation then I personally don't like the idea of feature packaging with credits because it puts certain features behind a paywall. Alternatively, I can use the credits to monetize the usage of those features. Usually when I see credits though, like the Monday.com example, they are incorporated into a tiered packaging structure. For Monday.com it probably makes sense to do it that way given they are only using the credits at this point to monetize the AI features.
Agreed. Think in this case, credits work since it's isolated to AI features. But definitely see what you mean about how that could get challenging for packaging if credits becomes the new primary metric.
I like how Miro is using AI credits. Each user has a limit, and the limit increases as you upgrade to the next plan.
Just wondering: credits have been a goto system for trial/freemium offerings in SaaS for years. What is the difference in this case?
Also my educated guess is they are simply creating a back-to-back system that their AI LLM provider has implemented for them. Which is easy to account for their business.
In my experience, credit models aren't as common for project management tools. Also thought it was interesting in the context of their existing seat model, and curious to see the interplay between those two models going forward.
I'm not familiar with back-to-back systems, but would love to learn more 🙂
Thanks Rob, Ah ok right. It’s not a system perse, but a way of making sure your payment system aligns with what you pay for service that your platform purchases and usage scales in the same way for that service. In order to make sure you don’t run financial risk on usage of your platform. I.e. your platform users scaling at a too low pricepoint or in different price brackets than what you pay to your supplier.
Very cool, and makes a lot of sense! Thanks for the explanation. 🙂
How do they control who within the company gets to consume the credits?
Like what if one team’s usage is so heavy that everyone else has only a few credits to share?
If things still work when the credit limit is breached, does that mean the company can get unexpected charges?
Great questions. I'd be curious if they have "budgeting" ability for different teams to have their own limits. Given how new this is, I'd doubt it, but would imagine that's coming. I know that's something the Metronome team offers, and would be huge here.
I think when the limit is reached only active automations will keep going, and there's no charge for those. But if the team wants to start a new automation, they would have to add more credits.
Great post. I'm curious what your thoughts are on the role of feature packaging in a model where credits are the primary pricing metric. If a key objective is to encourage experimentation then I personally don't like the idea of feature packaging with credits because it puts certain features behind a paywall. Alternatively, I can use the credits to monetize the usage of those features. Usually when I see credits though, like the Monday.com example, they are incorporated into a tiered packaging structure. For Monday.com it probably makes sense to do it that way given they are only using the credits at this point to monetize the AI features.
Agreed. Think in this case, credits work since it's isolated to AI features. But definitely see what you mean about how that could get challenging for packaging if credits becomes the new primary metric.
I like how Miro is using AI credits. Each user has a limit, and the limit increases as you upgrade to the next plan.