Pricing Strategies: #2 Plan your Service Offerings using Plans

Pricing Strategies: #2 Plan your Service Offerings using Plans

Meet Harvey & Mia, hailing from the same Tech school, carrying the dream of setting up their own IT maintenance firm in their location. They drew up a clear business plan and put their business in motion on New Year's Eve. They had great reception right from the beginning. Harvey was a little concerned about investing in a back-office solution and decided to work with basic tools for customer management, invoicing, and reporting.


Whereas Mia, even though she had a similar start to Harvey, liked to experiment and get into solid back office solutions upfront. Months went by, and the customer base grew to nearly a thousand.

"Another month, another batch of invoices.. "

That's what Harvey sighed every time he sat down to prepare billing for his IT maintenance clients. Every month looked the same: scan last month's invoice, tweak a few numbers, re-check the values, send again. But as his business grew, so did the inconsistencies. Some clients increased their usage, some reduced it, and some added new devices in the mid-month. Yet, his recurring invoices didn't reflect these nuances unless he manually intervened.


Meanwhile, his friend Mia seemed to scale effortlessly. Her billing wasn't tired of recurring invoices at all. She used subscription plans. Instead of repeating invoices, she packaged her offerings into structured plans that made sense to her customers. She presented multiple plans, each with a clear scope, usage allowance, and pricing model. Customers subscribed, upgraded, downgraded or extended without requiring Mia to rebuild or recalculate an invoice. Her billing ran on autopilot most of the time, while Harvey found himself buried in month-end edits.

This contrast highlights the importance of being ready for the shift, especially if you are offering services. Recurring invoices keep generating revenue, but subscription plans build businesses and help you strategise your sales.

Subscription Plans Vs Recurring Invoices 

Recurring invoices repeat a charge. They don't really understand usage, limits, upgrades, downgrades or changes in the billing cycle. In contrast, Plans in Zoho Billing is designed to inherit usage, limits, and amendments, and to provide room for scaling.


Recurring Invoices

Subscription Plans

Every billing cycle needs manual oversight.

Billing is automated based on a predefined frequency.

Pricing adjustments require editing the template.

Pricing is structured by tiers or units.  

Usage changes are tracked separately.

Upgrades and downgrades are seamless and prorated.

Customers have little clarity on what's included and what's not.

Customers understand precisely what they're paying for.

Scaling takes lots of admin effort.

Scaling becomes operationally effortless.

 


Idea
Tips: If you deliver services regularly, you can experiment by productising your services into plans rather than billing them as recurring invoices. It simplifies billing and strengthens your offerings.

Plans: The Foundation of Subscription-Based Billing 

A subscription plan is more than a price bracket. It's a packaged version of your ongoing services. It defines,

  • What does the customer receive?

  • How often are they billed?

  • Does the usage limit apply?

  • How do pricing changes as they scale?

 It transforms your service into a structured offering your customers can choose from, compare and grow with.

Zoho Billing arguably offers the best plan configuration for every service industry, from SaaS to membership, fintech, and consulting.


Different Pricing Models for Plans 

Subscription plans are not always a single plan. You are free to add as many plans for the service as you like, with different inclusions and limitations for each.  Zoho Billing allows multiple pricing models that help your services evolve naturally.


Flat Pricing

Flat pricing suits businesses whose service value remains consistent every month. Customers pay a fixed, recurring amount regardless of usage, providing simplicity for customers and stability for businesses.

Best Fit for:

  • Field Services or pre-booked services.

  • Legal or Accounting Services.

  • Financial services.

  • Memberships

Idea

Strategic Advantage:

Flat pricing reduces customer decision-making and makes your offering easy to understand and market.


Unit-Based Pricing

This pricing is transparent and straightforward. It allows you to charge your clients per user, per device, per site or per hour.

Best Fit for:

  • IT services.

  • HR or accounting services.

  • Maintenance industries.

Idea

Strategic Advantage:

Unit price gives clarity, and customers instantly understand what they're paying for.


Tier-Based Pricing

This pricing model allows you to charge exactly based on the pricing tier. Customers move through predefined tiers based on usage (eg, hours, tickets, devices, etc). Each tier has its own price and benefits.

Best Fit for:

  • Growing teams with varying usage.

  • Service levels such as Basic, Standard, and Premium.

Idea

Strategic Advantage:

Tier creates a natural upgrade path and fair, usage-based billing.


Volume-Based Pricing

This pricing method provides a single rate based on total usage. This provides the convenience of offering lower rates for high-volume purchases.

Best Fit for:

  • Device management

  • Bulk service consumption.

Idea

Strategic Advantage:

Volume pricing encourages customers to consume more to unlock better pricing.


Package-Based Pricing

Packaging typically means combining one or more services into fixed bundles. This is popular as it appears to be more value for money.

Best Fit for:

  • SaaS Businesses

  • Streaming Services.

Idea

Strategic Advantage:

Package or bundle pricing increases product/service perceived value and simplifies decision-making.


 What Subscription Plans Do for Your Business 

Implementing plans shifts your service from "bill me monthly" to "subscribe to what fits me". It enhances customer experience and streamlines your operations.


With plans, your business gains predictable and stable recurring revenue. It automates changes to the subscription, including upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations. It makes it easy for customers to scale based on their requirements.

For CFOs and CEOs, Zoho Billing provides reports based on plans that envision the possible positioning of their product/service based on pricing, location, region or customer purchase behaviour.

That's the real power of subscription plans. They turn recurring services into recurring growth with more structured, predictable and strategically aligned for scale. 


Notes
Up Next: Services Never Stop with just Plans.

    • Sticky Posts

    • Community Learning Series | Digest #5 — September 2020

      Dear customers, We're happy to bring you the September edition of our #CommunityDigest! Keep track of your subscription KPIs right from your smartphone: Last month, we enhanced our Android mobile app to help our customers get daily updates on their business health. We got to know from a lot of customers that this has made their job much more easier because they no longer have to keep a reminder to manually check on the previous day's revenue or activations. If you have not downloaded it yet, here's

    • Community Learning Series | Digest #4 - August 2020

      Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. I'm happy to bring you the fourth edition of our #CommunityDigest with some brand-new updates from us. 1. Daily Business Updates (for Android users) The Zoho Subscriptions Android app has got a cool new update: You can now get a push notification to your smartphone that lets you know how many activations and cancellations have taken place, and what's the net revenue for the previous day. The best part is, you can tell the app when exactly you

    • Community Learning Series | Digest #3 - July 2020

      Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. We're glad to bring you the July edition of our #CommunityDigest. New community members can view our previous newsletters here. This time, we have two major updates and three interesting topics for you: 1. Zoho Subscriptions Developer Community Since the inception of Zoho Subscriptions, our team believed that the recurring billing platform we provide should be able to offer an extensive API library that empowers businesses to automate most

    • Introducing: Community Learning Series | Digest #1 - May 2020

      Dear customers, We hope you are staying safe and healthy. Helping businesses manage their customer subscriptions more efficiently has always been, and always will be, our goal at Zoho Subscriptions. We strongly believe this is possible if we grow together as a community and share what we know with each other. To nurture this shared learning experience, here is our brand-new Community Learning Series! ​ Welcome to the first edition of our digest! Each edition of our community digest includes guides

      • Recent Topics

      • ERROR: Product type cannot be changed for Items having transactions.

        I have mistakenly added a product type as goods for an item that was a digital service. Now when HSN/SAC became mandatory, this brought my attention to this error I did. So I tried changing the product type but it displayed this error message Product

      • Boost your CRM accuracy with smart Data Enrichment

        Hello all! In this post let's look at data enrichment from a holistic perspective to gain more clarity on how you can use it. So, here's a quick recap of what data enrichment is and how you set it up it to enhance your existing module data! What is data

      • Is it possible to set a region lookup table so that my deal country can lookup this lookup table

        Hi there, I would like to be able to add a data lookup table with the following fields: Country, Region. And then in my deal report, i can then lookup this table to fish out the region in my report. This will be important for my sales process to categorise

      • Test Emails Show Sent "via zcsend.net" in My Gmail Account

        I noticed the following info... However, a few email service providers such as Outlook and Gmail will display that the email was sent by zcsend.net (Zoho campaigns’ server) on your behalf instead of just your from email address.  In order to prevent this, you can go for either of these options: Do not select the check box meant for DomainKey Signature which is listed under Unverified sender domains. Include our mail servers by advanced authentication method such as SPF/ Sender ID and DomainKey/ DKIM.

      • 'UnAuthenticated Connection: zbooks_connection'

        I have a zoho connection in Zoho Books, the link name es zbooks_connection, but I like to validate if exist, by example if I use this line in my code: response=zoho.books.getTemplates("", "","zbooks_connection"); But I don't  have the connection I like

      • Calling the new 'Custom API' feature from within a Custom Widget

        From what I've learned it is not possible to call an endpoint from the new "Custom API" feature within a Creator Widget. The SDK's doesn't support it yet, when calling it natively you end up with CORS issues or at least I couldn't get it working even

      • Cannot post to Instagram. I get the error: Insufficient permission to publish on this page. Check with your page Admin to update permissions.

        We had another admin that left the company. Since he left, we get this error when posting to Instagram.

      • Zoho desk desktop application

        does zoho desk has a destop applicaion?

      • Ability to re-order Workflow Rules

        We really need the ability to re-order workflow rules within departments.  Either the ability to drag/drop them into a different order or something.

      • Create an article template

        I have a question concern the Knolwedge Database from Zoho Desk. There is any possibility to create an article template ? Exemple of what I research : TODAY : I want to create a lot af articles with the same baseline > I create one article > I copy/paste

      • Change of Blog Author

        Hi, I am creating the blog post on behalf of my colleague. When I publish the post, it is showing my name as author of the post which is not intended and needs to be changed to my colleague's name. How can I change the name of the author in the blogs?? Thanks, Ramanan

      • Zoho FSM API Delete Record

        Hi FSM Team, It would be great if you could delete a record via API. Thank you,

      • Instant Messaging Update | Now migrate your WhatsApp Business phonenumber from another BSP to Zoho Desk | Dec'23

        Hi All, Everything seems to move at lightning speed these days, and time is certainly flying by for the IM team. But we are delighted at how much ground we covered this year. 🚀 For one, we enabled WhatsApp business phone number migration so that you

      • Upload ticket attachments via Drag-&-Drop

        Hello, if you want to upload a file to the ticket attachment you need to click the button and use the file browser to select and upload the desired file. In many cases, it would be much more efficient if you could simply drag the file to the browser window...

      • Can we disable add to cart in Zoho Commerce?

        Hello, Our sales happen on the phone. During the call the customer is directed to our website to inspect the products together with the sales rep. So we need a way to present our inventory. I figured Zoho Commerce is a good fit for this use case. However

      • Introducing WhatsApp integration in Bigin

        Greetings! In today's business landscape, messaging apps play a significant role in customer operations. Customers can engage with businesses, seek support, ask questions, receive personalized recommendations, read reviews, and even make purchases—all

      • Zoho One account closure vs deactivation

        I wonder what are the best practices and guidelines around deactivating vs deleting Zoho accounts in organisations? Any practical considerations?

      • Global Search placement in the new UI

        Having a hard time with the global search placement in the UI redesign. Surely I can't be the only one. Previously global search placement was perfect. A bar at the top/center of the page. Exactly where you would expect it to be. Since the new UI has

      • Schedule Zoho CRM reports only on Business Days

        Hello, Is it possible to schedule reports only on business days ? We currently get daily sales reports on weekend which has no value since the sales team doesn't work on weekends. Thanks

      • How to install Widget in inventory module

        Hi， I am trying to install a app into Sales Order Module related list, however there is no button allow me to do that. May I ask how to install widget to inventory module related list?

      • How to track a contact or customer's past product purchases in Bigin Premiere?

        Hello there. I am the sole user of Bigin for a small company (chess club), and would like to track current and past purchases made by a contact (player) or company (family which includes the player). Players may register for multiple tournaments, take

      • LENTITUD EN RECIBIR MAIL

        Buenas tardes, Estamos experimentando lentitud en la recepción de correos electrónicos.

      • Items should display under specific warehouse

        I have configured the multi warehouse but it show all the items under all warehouse which is not correct according to our business logic, so i want that items should only display under that specific warehouse not under all the warehouses not even with zero quantity. Some items should be common but not all so is there any option for that purpose so i can specific the items to its warehouse. Regards

      • Partial refunds

        I am trying to process refund for a one item invoice, however the refund is partial: i am getting this error while creating credit note, can anyone share some wisdom about this

      • Best practice importing items and matching assemblies

        Hi, I was wondering what would be the best practice to import items and composite items (assemblies) From my backup, what should I import first? The items or the composite items? I am on Zoho one, using inventory and books. Kind regards, Sabine

      • Bulk Fill In & Edit PO/Bill/SO/Invoice

        Hello, I am adding stock in bulk on a PO, the system is automatically populating the Rate (price) and Tax from the item data. Problem is that the bill rate is different from the rate on the item data, so I have to manually erase each and enter the price.

      • Separate Items & Services

        Hi, please separate items and services into different categories. Thank you

      • Items Below Reorder Point Report?

        Is there a way to run a report of Items that are below the Reorder Point? I don't see this as a specific report, nor can I figure out how to customize any of the other stock reports to give me this information. Please tell me I'm missing something s

      • Cancelled Transfer order problem

        Hello, We've canceled a transfer order, and we can't add the related items to a new Transfer Order. The system tells us that the bin doesn't have the required quantity, but when we check the item, it indicates that there are 2 units in the bin. It also

      • Creating a Chart from a Report

        In Zoho Analytics, is it possible to create a chart from a Pivot View report? We are looking to use Zoho Analytics to replace Excel for Sales reports and would like to be able to show both the table and the chart together.

      • Client Portal ZOHO ONE

        Dear Zoho one is fantastic option for companies but it seems to me that it is still an aggregation of aps let me explain I have zoho books with client portal so client access their invoice then I have zoho project with client portal so they can access their project but not their invoice without another URL another LOGIN Are you planning in creating a beautiful UI portal for client so we can control access to client in one location to multiple aps at least unify project and invoice aps that would

      • Email Insights included in Bigin emals are marked as SPAM everywhere

        Today I noticed that email recipients who use Office 365 never receive emails sent from Bigin. Further examination showed that all Email Insights links in email headers are marked as spam/phishing by Office 365. Example screen included. The problem is

      • Data Import | Zoho Analytics Custom Query Window Size

        Please increase the window size for the Custom Query Data Import. It's impossible to work with such a small query window.

      • Name changed in settings for mailbox but still not changed when typed in To field

        In the email account secretary@ i have updaetd the new staff members details but the old members name still appears when I type secretary@ in the To field. I cant work out where Zoho is finding the old name from. I have deleted the browser cache. If I

      • Cannot add my name to my domain name

        I want to have My name@mydomain.com and it says my name is linked to another account already. Please fix it since I do not have another account.

      • Invoice status on write-off is "Paid" - how do I change this to "Written off"

        HI guys, I want to write off a couple of outstanding invoices, but when I do this, the status of the invoices shows as "Paid". Clearly this is not the case and I need to be able to see that they are written off in the customer's history. Is there a way

      • Establishing new Zoho email account on laptop

        Good Morning: I am very long time Outlook business user and decided to try your email service last night and had established an account. I am trying to verify my account; how do I establish my Zoho email account on my laptop? I opened the account with

      • unable to send message reason 550 5.4.6 unusual sending activity

        My email account can't send message. It shows unable to send message reason 550 5.4.6 unusual sending activity detected

      • how to add email to existing organization i w

        I am already registered my organization and i have an email id. I need one more email id but i can't find anywhere .i want the cheapest email id . how to add ?

      • e-mail bloqueado

        Estou com meu e-mail lucas@peplus.me bloqueado, preciso desbloquear para retorno de usos em minhas atividades.

      • Next Page