Why our pricing is public — and why most SaaS pricing isn't

Three numbers on our pricing page: $489, $1,490, Custom. No "starts at." No "request a demo to learn more." No 14-step qualification form.

This is unusual. Most enterprise SaaS hides pricing. Here's what they're doing and why we're not doing it.

The standard playbook: surface a "talk to sales" CTA, qualify the lead through six rounds of discovery calls, anchor high in proposal, negotiate down for the prospect to feel like they "won." Sales cycle: 60-120 days for mid-market, 6-9 months for enterprise.

This works for the vendor. The customer pays a price calibrated to their pain threshold rather than to actual COGS or value-based pricing. Two customers with identical workloads can pay 5-10× different prices depending on how good their negotiator is.

For our market — independent and small-group dealerships — that playbook is actively hostile. Dealers don't have procurement teams. They don't have time for six discovery calls. They want to know if a tool fits their budget in 90 seconds.

So we publish.

$489/mo gets you Independent: 1 rooftop, 5 seats, 750 Herald minutes. That's the floor.

$1,490/mo per rooftop gets you Franchise: unlimited seats, 3,000 minutes, F&I + advanced reporting.

Enterprise is for multi-rooftop groups (5+) where the math genuinely doesn't fit either tier and we'd rather build a contract than blob it into Franchise.

There's no "but actually we'll discount this 40% on a yearly commit" trick. Annual prepay is 2 months free; that's it.

The cost of public pricing: we lose deals where a competitor buys the customer's attention with a 4-figure dinner and we never get to compete. We accept that — those weren't our customers anyway.

The benefit of public pricing: ~30% of our trial signups come straight off the pricing page without ever talking to a human. They show up Day 1 already convinced. That's the customer we want.

If you're a dealer reading this and your current vendor won't tell you what they're charging the dealer down the road for the same product — that's not normal. That's a tactic. You should be able to look up what something costs.