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

      • 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.

      • zoho labels api not working

        We're using n8n to automte email reply using zoho api. I'm facing issue with label api. I added the required scopes but its not working. i followed zoho api documentation but didn't work. also, where do i find/how do i create zoho oauth token mentioneeed

      • Desk DMARC forwarding failure for some senders

        I am not receiving important emails into Desk, because of DMARC errors. Here's what's happening: 1. email is sent from customer e.g. john@doe.com, to my email address, e.g info@acme.com 2. email is delivered successfully to info@acme.com (a shared inbox

      • Streams/Shared email doesn't show up in windows trident app. It works fine on MAC. Is there any difference between 2 install ?

        I can see streams/share email boxs on my MAC version of trident app but i can't see them in windows version of trident app. Is there any difference between 2 install? I try to find setting but not able to see any setting to add stream/share email boxes.

      • add zoho account

        How to add a zoho mail to previous zoho account? I have two

      • Zoho Desk Mobile App Year-End Roundup - 2025

        Dear Zoho Desk users, Greetings! As you gear up for the festive season, we are excited to share a quick journey into all that is released in 2025! Zia's generative AI capabilities Zia insights can be highly beneficial in helping agents manage daily support

      • Narrative 17: The role of Zia AI in customer support

        Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system: BTS Series Narrative 17: The role of Zia AI in customer support Overview Zia in Zoho Desk is a layered AI assistant that combines generative AI, prediction, and automation to support agents, automate

      • Domain Transaction

        I have purchased a domain name called trainedworkforce.co.in I made the payment got the receipt but the domain is still not purchased after successful transaction .

      • Ability to Set a Unified Tab Order/View for All Users in Zoho Projects

        Hello Zoho Projects Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to submit a feature request regarding tab/menu organization in Zoho Projects. Current Behavior: The tab (module) order in Zoho Projects is user-specific. Each user (internal or external)

      • Zohomail - The "All Messages" vs "In Box"

        Why do some new email message appear under the all messages view but not in my inbox? That's really annoying but to be fair I've experienced the same with gmail.

      • error while listing mails

        I can't access email in any of my folders: Oops, an error occurred - retry produces the second error response: error while listing mails (cannot parse null string). I've signed in and out of Zoho, restarted my iMac.

      • Introducing the Zoho Projects Learning Space

        Every product has its learning curve, and sometimes having a guided path makes the learning experience smoother. With that goal, we introduce a dedicated learning space for Zoho Projects, a platform where you can explore lessons, learn at your own pace,

      • Where to show Customization Field ?

        Dear Sir, I have made some New Field in Item Field Customisation. Now I don't require that field in Estimate, Sales Orders etc. I just wants that field in Sales Invoice to Show/Hide... Is that possible ?

      • Zoho Desk 2025 round-up: Key highlights on feature releases

        Hello everyone, As we gear up for 2026, here is a detailed round-up of all feature releases in Zoho Desk web throughout the year. For consolidated information on releases check out the What’s New page You can also watch these webinars. Zia in web Zia

      • Print Sales Orders, Purchase Orders or Invoices from API

        Hello, Is it possible to use the print option that is available in Sales Orders Purchase Orders and Invoices with the API?. I don't see any information in the docs about this. Thanks

      • How to show a hided report??

        in CRM Report , I clicked Hide incidently , how to show the floder again? Nowhere I can find the hided report floder...

      • Converting Customer Invoice to Purchase Bill

        Hi, In my service-based business, I sometimes create the customer invoice first, and later I receive the purchase bill from the vendor for the same job. Is there any option in Zoho Books to: Convert a customer invoice into a purchase bill, or Link/associate

      • Email tracking inquiry

        I am trying to track when my emails are opened and clicked like I previously did in HubSpot. HubSpot pretty much did the entire process automatically. After digging through, I finally found in settings --> emails --> BCC Dropbox there is an email I can

      • Mass Update of Lookup Fields not possible

        Hello List I've created a custom field for Leads and Contacts 'Current Campaign'. This is very Handy as I can filter leads and then related them to a campaign. Everything ready, but then I realized that mass update doesn't work for lookup fields... a

      • Collapsible Sections & Section Navigation Needed

        The flexibility of Zoho CRM has expanded greatly in the last few years, to the point that a leads module is now permissible to contain up to 350 fields. We don't use that many, but we are using 168 fields which are broken apart into 18 different sections.

      • Download Attached Files

        Hi everyone, Brand new to Zoho Creator.  I have a form with a subform. The subform has a field for "File Upload"   I have this in a subform to allow multiple files to be uploaded to the parent form. Once the files are uploaded, how can i download or view them?   Is this a setting I am just not seeing? If there isn't a way to download them, could i create another form field that dynamically creates the file's URL?  That way a user can click the URL to get to the file? Any help with this would be greatly

      • Ticket layout based on field or contact

        Hi! I want to support the following use-case: we are delivering custom IT solutions to different accounts we have, thus our ticket layouts, fields and languages (priority, status field values should be Hungarian) will be different. How should I setup

      • No funcionan correctamente el calculo de las horas laborales para informe de tickets

        Hola, estoy intentando sacar estadísticas de tiempo de primera respuesta y resolución en horario laboral de mis tickets, pero el calculo de horas en horario laboral no funciona correctamente cree los horarios con los feriados : Ajusté los acuerdos de

      • Zoho Mail Android app update: Set out of office response exclusively for organization members and external users, response interval

        Hello everyone! We have now introduced an option to configure out of office messages exclusively for organization members and external users within the Zoho Mail app. Additionally, now you can also customize response intervals for the Out of office messages.

      • Feature Request: Detailed View - Related Block Links!

        Desperately need a view record link option on records displaying in the related blocks on a Detail View. For the love of god, please add this feature. Thank you!

      • Sub-Form Padding in CSV Export

        Hi, When you use the Sub-Form, and for example you have a Date Field on the Main Page, then Option 1 and Option 2 fields on the Subform, when you export this to CSV the Date column will only have the Date in 1 row, the first row, it would be nice to pad

      • Dependent / Dynamic DropDown in ZohoSheets

        Has anyone figured out a way to create a Dropdown, the values of which is dependent on Values entered in the other cell ?

      • How do I change the order of fields in the new Task screen?

        I have gone into the Task module layout, and moving the fields around does not seem to move them in the Create Task screen. Screenshot below. I have a field (Description) that we want to use frequently, but it is inconveniently placed within the More

      • Zoho → ShipStation Integration – Sales Order–Driven Fulfilment Workflow

        Hello All, I’m reaching out to explore the best way to integrate a shipping tool into our inventory which will speed our process up. We are looking to integrate ShipStation into our existing order-to-fulfilment workflow, as we’re keen to standardise on

      • IA ou je peux trouver comment utiliser IA

        Je voudrais utiliser IA dans l'interface zoho pour m'aider quand j'ai des questions de rôle partage ou autre configuration d'automatisation, j'utiliser ChatGPT externe mais il ne connait pas toujours l'interface zoho et les réponses sont parfois longue

      • Data Processing Basis

        Hi, Is there a way to automate the data processing for a candidate every time an application arrives from job boards, without requiring manual intervention? That is, to automatically acquire consent for data processing. I've seen a workflow that allows

      • Disable Zoho Inventory Tracking / Delink Zoho Books & Inventory

        We have integrated zoho inventory with zoho books? Now after a long time, we want to disable inventory tracking and delink these 2 modules. Zoho says we cant do it. Anybody else going thru the same ? Any possibility at all? Why does zoho not allow to

      • Zoho vault instal on windows

        I am trying to use Zoho Vault Desktop for Windows, but I am unable to complete the sign-in process. Problem description After logging in to my Zoho account and clicking Accept on the authorization page, nothing happens. The application does not proceed

      • ZOHO GLITCHES

        Ok, you guys have done a great job at building a platform that has the potential to surmount the competition but these glitches are becoming more than frustrating! This is beyond annoying, I'm trying draft lawsuits and type up privacy and refund policies

      • Notification to customers when I use a Zoho function

        Hi all, I tried searching the community but couldn't find anything about it. I noticed that the customer receives the notification of reopening the old ticket but does not receive the notification of opening a new ticket when I use the function: "separate

      • Next Page