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.

 

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

Up Next: Services Never Stop with just Plans.

• Topic Participants

• Hari Hara Sudhan. S

  

• 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

• Zoho CRM Portal Field Level Permission Issue

  Hi Support Team, I am using the Zoho CRM Portal and configuring field-level editing permissions. However, we are unable to restrict portal users from editing certain fields. We have created a portal and provided View and Edit (Shared Only) access for

• Custom Fonts in Zoho CRM Template Builder

  Hi, I am currently creating a new template for our quotes using the Zoho CRM template builder. However, I noticed that there is no option to add custom fonts to the template builder. It would greatly enhance the flexibility and branding capabilities if

• Collaboration with customers made easy with Zoom Meeting and Zoho Desk integration

  Hello everyone! We are happy to announce that you can now integrate your Zoho Desk account with Zoom Meeting. The integration bridges the gap between digital communication and human connection, empowering teams to deliver timely support when it matters

• CRM Canvas - Upload Attachments

  I am in the process of changing my screens to Canvas.  On one screen, I have tabs with related lists, one of which is attachments.  There doesn't appear to be a way to upload documents though.  Am I missing something really obvious?  Does anyone have

• TrueSync regularly filling up my local disk

  Seems that WorkDrive's TrueSync randomly starts filling up my local hard drive space. None of the folders have been set as "Make Offline" but still it seems to randomly start making file offline. The settings of the app is so minimal and is of no real

• Kaizen #194 : Trigger Client Script via Custom buttons

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another interesting and useful Kaizen post. We know that Client Scripts can be triggered with Canvas buttons and we discussed this with a use case in Kaizen#180. Today, let us discuss how to trigger Client Script when a

• Picklist field shows "none" as default

  Hello, Is there an option to avoid showing "none" as the default value in a picklist field? I also don't want to see any option displayed. My expectation is to have a blank bar, and then when I display the drop-down list, I can choose whichever I wa

• Stage-probability mapping feature in custom module

  Hi, I'm building a custom module for manage projects. I would like to implement the stage-probability feature that Potentials has. Is this possible?

• Field Description is very small

  Hello, The field Description in the activity is very small. Why don't try open a new window, or a bigger popup, or increase the width of the "popup". Example:

• StatusIQ

  Please add StatusIQ to data sources. We using site24x7 and StatusIQ together and site24x7 integration is already there. Thanks and regards, Torsten

• In Zoho People, the Operations buttons are frequently not visible or do not appear consistently.

  In Zoho People, the Operations buttons are frequently not visible or do not appear consistently. We request you to please investigate and address this issue, as it is affecting daily HR operations and user access.

• Marketing Tip #14: Increase cart value with product bundles

  Bundling products is a great way to increase average order value while giving customers more convenience. Think “camera + tripod + memory card” or “soap + lotion + bath salts.” Bundles make shopping easier and feel like a better deal. It’s a win-win for

• Problem with Workdrive folders

  I'm having a problem a problem accessing files in a Zoho work drive folder when using the Zoho writer app. The problem folder appears grayed out in the Zoho work drive window in both the online and writer application. However I can open the folder in

• Pre-orders at Zoho Commerce

  We plan to have regular producs that are avaliable for purchase now and we plan to have products that will be avaliable in 2-4 weeks. How we can take the pre-orders for these products? We need to take the money for the product now, but the delivery will

• Can multiple agents be assigned to one ticket on purpose?

  Is it possible to assign one ticket to two or more agents at a time? I would like the option to have multiple people working on one ticket so that the same ticket is viewable for those agents on their list of pending tickets. Is something like this currently

• Edit default "We are here to help you" text in chat SalesIQ widget

  Does anyone know how this text can be edited? I can't find it anywhere in settings. Thanks!

• Feature Request: Sync Leave Tracker to Zoho Mail / Calendar or provide option to download information

  Zoho Leave Tracker offers the option to sync the leave Calendar to Microsoft 365 and Google Calendar. Adding an option to sync to Zoho-Mail Calendar would avoid duplication and add significant value for users. An alternative would be to allow users to

• Compensation | Salary Packages - Hourly Wage Needed

  The US Bureau of Labor Statistics says 55.7% of all workers in the US are paid by the hour. I don't know how that compares to the rest of the world, but I would think that this alone would justify the need for having an hourly-based salary package option.

• Multiple currencies - doesn’t seem to work for site visitors / customers

  I am trying to understand how the multiple currency feature works from the perspective of the website visitor who is shopping on my Zoho Commerce site. My site’s base currency is US Dollars (USD) but my store is for customers in Costa Rica and I would

• Archiving Contacts

  How do I archive a list of contacts, or individual contacts?

• How do people handle using Outlook and Zoho Project calendar at the same time?

  We have an ongoing problem in our organisation where we use Zoho Projects to plan all of our projects tasks and that also allows us to look forward using the workload report to see which of our consultants are overstretched etc and which are available.

• 10GB Email Storage Limits in Zoho CRM

  We’ve had Zoho One for almost 5 years and have always synced our emails from Gmail via IMAP… As of late, we’ve run into issues with our emails not syncing, due to being over the 10GB storage cap… What’s very odd is that we haven’t changed a thing? I know

• How to set page defaults in zoho writer?

  hi, everytime i open the zoho writer i have to change the default page settings to - A4 from letter, margins to narrow and header and footer to 0. I cannot set this as default as that option is grayed out! so I am unable to click it. I saved the document

• Enable History Tracking for Picklist Values Not Available

  When I create a custom picklist field in Deals, the "Enable History Tracking for Picklist Values" option is not available in the Edit Properties area of the picklist. When I create a picklist in any other Module, that option is available. Is there a specific reason why this isn't available for fields in the Deals Module?

• Vault crashes on Android Devices

  Vault is continuously closing after entering the master password on my Android device. After several attempts I get a system message that says there is a bug in the app. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the app, and cleared the app cache, but nothing

• ¿Cómo puedo configurar las contraseñas creadas bajo una directiva para que nunca caduquen y no aparezcan como caducadas en los informes?

  ¿Cómo puedo configurar las contraseñas creadas bajo una directiva para que nunca caduquen y no aparezcan como caducadas en los informes? La razón por la cual contraseña estas no deben caducar es porque su actualización depende de mi cliente y no de mí.

• Camera access

  My picture doesn't appear in a group discussion. (The audio is fine.) The guide says "Click the lock icon on address bar," but I can't find it. Advise, please

• Are static links available

  I'm still using Zoho Meeting in trial mode. My previous webinar software provided a static link, and I made the mistaken assumption that I could send out my link and start a meeting later. Mass confusion, but my fault. With a paid version do you get a

• Why is Zoho Meeting quality so poor?

  I've just moved from Office 365 to Zoho Workplace and have been generally really positive about the new platform -- nicely integrated, nice GUI, good and easy-to-understand control and customisation, and at a reasonable price. However, what is going on

• Integration between "Zoho Sprints Stories" and "Zoho Projects Tasks/Subtasks"

  We have two separate teams in our organization using Zoho for project management: The Development team uses Zoho Sprints and follows Agile/Scrum methodology. The Infrastructure team uses Zoho Projects for traditional task-based project management. In

• Where can we specify custom CSS in Zoho Forms custom theme ?

  I'm using a form with a dark theme. The OTP popup window is unreadable, because for some reason, the OTP popup background fixes color to white, but still takes the font color specified in the custom theme. This ends up as white on white for me, rendering

• Team Gamification

  Would love to motivate, engage and encourage our team with our social media posts. Would like to include Gamification features of Social Media in Zoho Social or Marketing Automation. And also bring in Social Advocacy tools/tracking/management to these,

• Sync Data from MA to CRM

  Currently, it's a one-way sync of data from the CRM to MA. I believe we should have the ability to select fields to sync from MA to the CRM. The lead score is a perfect example of this. In an ideal world we would be able to impact the lead score of a

• Update CRM record action

  Currently, MA only offers a "Push Data" action to push data to a CRM module. This action is built to cover the need to both create a new record and update an existing record. Because it has been implemented this way all required fields on the CRM module

• Pro Lite Upgrade - Quick Access Tray

  Hello, I was going to upgrade to Pro Lite but the Quick Access Tray feature isn't available for Windows. Of the four features not available for Windows, the QAT is what I'm most interested in. Are there plans to add this feature for Windows anytime soon?

• Boost your CRM communication with new font types, sizes, and default reply-to options while composing emails

  Hello Everyone, We’re excited to introduce a series of impactful enhancements to the email composer settings in Zoho CRM. These updates enable you to personalize and optimize your customer interactions with greater efficiency. So what's new? Add custom

• Feature Enhancement Request – Text Formatting Options in Item Description (Zoho Books/Quotes Module)

  Dear Zoho Development Team, Greetings from Radiant360 Integrated Technical Services LLC. We would like to bring to your attention a functional limitation we've encountered within the Item Table / Quote Description section of Zoho Books (and Zoho CRM Quotes).

• 3 year sick leave cycle

  How do you set up a sick leave cycle for South Africa? In SA the sick works like this for the first 6 months you get 0.83 paid sick days a month, then after 6 months you sick leave balance is reset to 30 days that can be used over a 36 month cycle.  This

• WorkDrive and CRM not in sync

  1/ There is a CRM file upload field with WorkDrive file set as the source: 2/ Then the file is renamed in WorkDrive (outside CRM): 3/ The File in CRM is not synced after the change in WorkDrive; the file name (reference) in CRM record is not updated (here

• Is Zoho Communityspaces now part of Zoho One?

  Is Zoho Communityspaces now part of Zoho One?

• Next Page