Pricing Strategies: #3 Services never Stop with just Plans

Pricing Strategies: #3 Services never Stop with just Plans

"Hey, while you're here, could you also take a look at the vegetable patch?"


Aaron hears that line almost every week.

He runs a small gardening service, the kind where customers subscribe to a simple monthly plan that includes basic maintenance, mowing, watering, trimming and fertilising the greenery around the house. It was a clean plan, easy to quote and deliver. But every visit came with just one more request, which Aaron can hardly deny.

"Can you add some new soil to the corner beds?"

"Do you have time to prune the roses today?"

"Can you install a drip line this month?"

"On, and do you think we could add two more bags of compost next time?"

Aaron would laugh and say, "Sure, but that's not a part of the routine."

Then he'd rather do the work for free, feeling it's a small thing to charge or charge manually, which customers sometimes hesitate to pay or write a note to invoice later, which he misses most of the time.

By the end of the month, his plan-based business no longer looked like a plan. It seems like a collection of unpredictable, scattered requests that his billing system wasn't built to handle.

One day, a customer said, "I wish I could just add these extra things like a topping on a pizza. My plan stays the same, but I choose the extras I want."

That made Aaron realise something: People don't want complicated plans, but they do want flexibility in purchase. They want a solid base plan and the freedom to add the extras that fit their needs.

This is precisely why Zoho Billing offers Add-ons, to keep plans clean while allowing customers to personalise their subscription effortlessly.

Add-ons in Zoho Billing 

Add-ons extend a subscription beyond the base offering. They allow customers to purchase additional value without changing their main plan, while letting businesses scale offerings cleanly. Zoho Billing offers a comprehensive, structured add-on framework that covers different types of add-ons to address real-world subscription challenges.


Standalone Add-ons 

Standalone addons are independent enhancements that customers can attach to their existing plan whenever they prefer. They are meant to offer extra service or features that are not included in the base plan but are commonly requested.


Suitable Businesses: Gardening services, home cleaning services, fitness studios, consulting firms, repair/maintenance services.
IdeaStrategic Advantage: Standalone addons let businesses say "yes" to customer requests immediately without redesigning plans. They boost revenue, reduce complexity, and make offerings more modular.  

Addon Groups 

Addon Groups categorise addons into structured sections. This ensures customers see relevant options, not a long list of unrelated extras. This allows businesses to organise add-ons into meaningful groups, such as garden enhancement, soil services, and irrigation upgrades.


Suitable Businesses: Software platforms with feature bundles, wellness centres offering different service categories, and agencies with add-on service families.
Idea
Strategic Advantage: 
 Grouped addons improve customer experience and help businesses present upsells cleanly, increase adoption without overwhelming the subscribers.  

Recurring Addons 

Recurring addons behave like mini-subscriptions attached to the main plan. They repeat every billing cycle unless removed. These are long-term additions, such as premium service layers, extra recurring hours, monthly replenishments, or ongoing feature unlocks.


Suitable Business: IT service providers, digital content platforms, property maintenance companies, and management services businesses.
IdeaStrategic Advantage: Recurring addons provide predictable recurring revenue and increase customer retention by integrating deeper value into each billing cycle.  

One-time Addons 

These are single-use enhancements that do not renew. They are mostly occasional or emergency requests such as festival cleanup, a one-time plan installation, a deep garden care session or a special consultation.


Suitable Business: Event-based service providers, emergency repair teams, creative agencies, and landscaping services offering seasonal cleanup. 
Idea
Strategic Advantage: One-time add-ons let you capture revenue for specific needs while keeping plans simple. Customers appreciate paying just for what they use.

Quantity-based Addon 

Quantity-based addons allow customers to buy multiple units of a service enhancement. It depends on scaling by volume, such as purchasing more working hours, extra visits, additional fertiliser bags or extra user seats.


Suitable Business: Co-working space selling extra desks, SaaS apps offering additional seats, consulting firms selling extra billable hours, and gardening service selling extra material units.

IdeaStrategic Advantage: This model supports incremental growth, reduces customer friction and increases recurring revenue without modifying the customer's main subscription.  

Usage Addons 

Usage-based addons charge based on the quantity consumed, with tracking after the fact. This addon is measured purely on usage, such as irrigation water consumption, number of tasks completed, hours logged or API calls made.


Suitable Business: Utilities, IoT device monitoring service, API driven SaaS platform, retail services, telecom and metered resource providers.

IdeaStrategic Advantage: Usage based addon build trust and attract customers who prefer flexible at the same time fair way of billing. They also unlock revenue that grows organically with usage.  

 What Addon Do for the Business 

Add-ons transform how a business delivers value. Instead of forcing every customer into a rigid plan structure, they allow flexible, optional and scalable extensions that match real-world needs. This means your plan remains clean and predictable, while your revenue model becomes dynamic and adaptive.

Addons in Zoho Billing not only offer different types, but also provide flexible rules for when and how addons should be attached to a subscription. You can configure,


Association Type: 

Association type controls whether the addon is optional, recommended or mandatory.

  1. Optional: The addon can be added or removed at any time when creating or editing a subscription.

  2. Recommended: The addons appear as a suggested enhancement on the hosted page.

  3. Mandatory: Addon is automatically included with the plan and cannot be removed.


Applicable Event: 

The applicable event defines the time range during which the addon should be considered.

  1. Subscription activation: Triggered when a subscription goes live.

  2. Plan Change: Triggered whenever a subscription is created or updated with a selected plan.

  3. Trial Activation: Triggered when the trial starts. 


Event Frequency 

Event frequency determines whether the addon applies once or every time the event occurs.

  1. Whenever Event Occurs: The addon is applied every time the selected event happens.

  2. First-Time Event Occurs: The addon applies only to the first occurrence of the chosen event.


With all these addons, make your subscription model future-ready, flexible, profitable and responsive to how customers actually use your service.

Customers subscribe to your plan for the essentials. But they stay and spend more when they can tailor the service to their evolving needs.

Plans create the foundation, and addons create the experience.

Together, they build a perfect subscription model that scales merrily. 


Notes
Up Next: Counting on Discounts

    • 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

    Nederlandse Hulpbronnen


      • Recent Topics

      • Synching changes to Stripe when changes are made in Zoho Billing

        We have a situation where we have merged customers in Zoho BIlling and then found out later that the payment in Stripe was not updated and still associated with the old customer record. The card gets updated and billed, but that payment is still associated

      • How do I fix this? Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.

        How do I fix this? Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.

      • Disable Smart Filters By Default

        The smart filters "feature" is causing confusion for Zoho Mail users. New emails should be delivered to the inbox unless they have specifically opted to redirect them somewhere else. People don't understand that new emails might be waiting in a random

      • ME SALE ESTE ERROR: No fue posible enviar el mensaje;Motivo:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked

        Ayuda!! Me sale este error al intentar enviar mensajes desde mi correo electronico de Zoho! Tampoco recibo correos pues cuando me envia rebotan. Ayuda, Me urge enviar unos correo importantes!! Quedo atenta MAGDA HERNANDEZ +5731120888408

      • Client Script | Update - Client Script Support For Custom Buttons

        Hello everyone! We are excited to announce one of the most requested features - Client Script support for Custom Buttons. This enhancement lets you run custom logic on button actions, giving you greater flexibility and control over your user interactions.

      • validation rules doesn't work in Blueprint when it is validated using function?

        I have tried to create a validation rule in the deal module. it works if I try to create a deal manually or if I try to update the empty field inside a deal. but when I try to update the field via the blueprint mandatory field, it seems the validation

      • Image field in custom module

        Hi guy, Is there any hope of adding a custom image field in the custom module? We created a custom module to keep track of assets, and it would be helpful if we could attach an image to the record. Thanks Rudy

      • Zoho Mail not working

        Zoho Mail not working

      • Stop the Workarounds: We Need Native Multi-Step Forms

        After over 17 years of community requests, I'm hoping the Zoho team can finally address the lack of native multi-page form support in Zoho Creator. This has been one of the longest-standing feature requests in the community, with threads spanning nearly

      • CRM x WorkDrive: File storage for new CRM signups is now powered by WorkDrive

        Availability Editions: All DCs: All Release plan: Released for new signups in all DCs. It will be enabled for existing users in a phased manner in the upcoming months. Help documentation: Documents in Zoho CRM Manage folders in Documents tab Manage files

      • Queries on Project-Based Inventory Consumption and Proforma Invoice in Zoho ERP

        We would appreciate your clarification on how Zoho ERP plans to handle the following: Project-based inventory consumption without itemized sales orders Accurate project cost tracking along with inventory reduction Proforma Invoice usage We look forward

      • I can't add a new customer in Zoho invoice? Anyone had this issue before?

        Ive been using Zoho invoice for over 6 years. Today I wanted to add a new customer to send an invoice to but it doesn't save when I try to access it from the pulldown menu when you go to send a new invoice.

      • Spreadsheet View click & focus issue in Arabic (RTL) localization

        Hello Zoho Support Team, I am facing an issue in Zoho Creator Spreadsheet View when using Arabic localization (RTL). Scenario: My app supports English (LTR) and Arabic (RTL). I created a Spreadsheet View for a form. In English, everything works correctly.

      • Fix the speed

        It takes ages to load on every step even though my dataset is quite small.

      • Copy contents of File Upload Field into Workdrive

        Hello, I have set up our CRM so that a Workdrive folder is automatically created for each Deal via workflow, this adds the id of the folder into a dedicated field. We also have a field on each Deal called 'Approved Layout', which is a file upload field.

      • Can I add Conditional merge tags on my Templates?

        Hi I was wondering if I can use Conditional Mail Merge tags inside my Email templates/Quotes etc within the CRM? In spanish and in our business we use gender and academic degree salutations , ie: Dr., Dra., Sr., Srta., so the beginning of an email / letter

      • Customer address in Zoho Bookings

        Hello,  Is it possible to add customer address information to the Zoho bookings appointment screen? Or have it pull that information automatically from the CRM? We are wanting to use this as a field management software but it is difficult to pull the address from multiple sources when it would be ideal to have a clickable address on the appointment screen that opens up the user's maps.  It would also be advantageous for the "list view" to show appointment times instead of just duration and booking

      • Ghost email notification on a form

        Hello, We have recently encountered an error where I can not see a email notification set up for a form which I am currently the owner, although neither the form nor the notification were created by me. However, neither can the Super Admin access the

      • Introducing Record Category in CRM: Group options to see record status at a glance.

        Release update: Currently available for CN, JP, and AU DCs (all paid editions). It will be made available to other DCs by mid-March. Hello everyone, We are pleased to introduce Record Category in Zoho CRM - a new capability where the user can get an overview

      • bulk edit records and run internal logic

        hi there is few logics in manner "it this than that" logics work well when i edit entry openning it one by one (via workflow "on add/edit - on success" , for custom field "on update/on user input") but when i try bulk edit records - logic does not work.  how can i turn on logic to work as programmed - for mass editing records via bulk edit?

      • Dheeraj Sudan and Meenu Hinduja-How do I customize Zoho apps to suit my needs?

        Hi Everyone, I'm Meenu Hinduja and my husband Dheeraj Sudan, run a business. I’m looking to tweak a few things to fit my needs, and I’d love to hear what customizations others have done. Any tips or examples would be super helpful! Regards Dheeraj Sudan

      • Bulk bank rule creatioin

        Hi team, I am exploring Option to create a multiple bank rule. Could please suggest the option to implement this?

      • Limitations on editing a message in Cliq

        Hi I've checked the documentations and there's no mention of how many times a message can be edited. When trying with code, I get various numbers such as ~1000 edits or so. Please mention if there's a limit on how many times one can change a message via

      • Zoho mail account ownership transfer

        We recently took over another company and have assumed responsibility for its Zoho account, including Zoho Mail and all related services. We would like to formally transfer ownership of this account to our organization. Could you please outline the complete

      • email address autocomplete

        Is there a way to eliminate certain addresses from showing up in auto complete when entering an address? Many old and unused addresses currently show up, many of which I would like to get rid of. Thanks

      • How to use MAIL without Dashboard?

        Whenever I open Mail, it opens Dashboard. This makes Mail area very small and also I cannot manage Folders (like delete/rename) etc. I want to know if there is any way to open only Mail apps and not the Dashboard.

      • Introducing Radio Buttons and Numeric Range Sliders in Zoho CRM

        Release update: Currently out for CN, JP, AU and CA DCs (Free and standard editions). For other DCs, this will be released by mid-March. Hello everyone, We are pleased to share with you that Zoho CRM's Layout Editor now includes two new field formats—

      • User is already present in another account error in assigning users to marketing automation

        Hello everyone Greeting, I had a problem in assigning user in marketing automation, when I try to add it I see this error: (User is already present in another account error) what should I do?

      • How can i download and secure all my mails from the archive folders?

        Hi, i would like to download all my mails from my archive folders and secure it on my external HDD. Is this possible? Thx. amir

      • How to open filtered report in popup using Zoho Creator Deluge?

        First report: There is so many records in Report, If I click one record, pop up is occur. Second report (Pop up): there is also so many record data, and this pop up is also Report, not Form. First report: It has got "Sales Order" field. when I click any

      • Deluge Function to Update Custom Field

        I'm trying to get a Deluge function (which will run as part of a Schedule in Desk) that retrieves all tickets with the status "Recurring" and updates the custom field checkbox "cf_recurring" to "true". Here's what I have, which doesn't work: searchValue

      • Make panel configuration interface wider

        Hi there, The same way you changed the custom function editor's interface wider, it would be nice to be able to edit panels in pages using the full width of the screen rather than the currently max-width: 1368px. Is there a reason for having the configuration panel not taking the full width? Its impossible at this width to edit panels that have a lot of elements. Please change it to 100% so we can better edit the layouts. Thanks! B.

      • Can you default reports/charts to report the current week?

        Our data table maintains two years of data. Management wants certain report to automatically filter the report to the latest calendar week. I know I can do this manually with filters but I want the report to automatically default to the latest calendar

      • Rendering PDF to view on page

        My company upload lots of PDF files onto Zoho. But every time we open it, it downloads the file instead of viewing it on the web page. Does Zoho allow uploaded PDF files to be rendered to view on web page yet? I've been trying to use <embed> or <object> but it cannot be loaded.  (similar thread: https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/topic/how-to-open-a-pdf-file-of-a-view-in-preview-mode)

      • Overlapping Reports in Dashboards

        It's rare, but occasionally it would be a good feature if I were able to overlap reports, either fully or partially in the Dashboards. Also, then having the ability to move objects to the front or rear, or make them transparent/translucent would be good

      • Feature request - pin or flag note

        Hi, It would be great if you could either pin or flag one or more notes so that they remain visible when there are a bunch of notes and some get hidden in the list. Sometimes you are looking for a particular name that gets lost in a bunch of less important

      • Admin guide: Handling Mailbox Settings for better user management

        Managing day-to-day email scenarios, such as supporting users with multiple email addresses, ensuring uninterrupted email access during employee absences, enabling secure mailbox sharing, and enforcing organizational security and compliance, can be challenging

      • "View ticket" link is broken

        The "View ticket" link in our Zoho ticketing system confirmation emails is broken (please see attached). Impacts ability to update/review details, and, refresh recollection at a later date. Any help would be much appreciated.

      • Unable to attach Work Order / Service Appointment PDF to Email Notifications (Zoho FSM)

        I’m trying to include the Work Order PDF or Service Appointment PDF as an attachment in Email Notifications (automation/notification templates), but I don’t see any option to attach these generated PDFs. Is this currently supported in Zoho FSM? If not,

      • Cisco Webex Calling Intergration

        Hi Guys, Our organisation is looking at a move from Salesforce to Zoho. We have found there is no support for Cisco Webex Calling however? Is there a way to enable this or are there any apps which can provide this? Thanks!

      • Next Page