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Re:Ask HN: Who is the target audience for ~$1000 software? by jdietrich on Sunday October 15, 2017 @04:27AM (#15476371)
$1000 is the purchasing limit in most large enterprises - anything over $1000 needs specific authorization. Buying a product at $999 is completely frictionless, while buying a product for $1001 involves multiple meetings and reams of paperwork. In enterprise purchasing logic, $999 is indistinguishable from free and $1001 might as well be $50,000.

Clever software marketers have realized that a $999/mo SaaS product fits under that limit just as well as a $999 boxed product.

Re:Ask HN: Who is the target audience for ~$1000 software? by troydavis on Sunday October 15, 2017 @07:58AM (#15476785)
At least from having sold to a small subset of them, the “most” in “$1000 is the purchasing limit in most large enterprises” isn’t accurate.

Yes, almost every large company has different purchase requisition approval processes based on the amount and often the type of expense, but they vary widely between companies and roles. There’s nothing magical about $1000 vs $500, $250, $0, or $2500. I’m not even sure $1000 is the mode; at least from my small sample, $0 and something larger ($2500 or $5000) are more common.

Also, in nearly all cases I’ve seen, large companies determine the approval process for anything with a monthly fee differently (generally using the total 1-year expense). If it ever existed, the “clever exception” is long gone now that companies buy a lot of SaaS.

Finally, usually larger enterprises are using SAP, Oacle ERP, Coupa, or a similar “Procure to pay” (yes, that’s what the category calls itself) product, and they have really complex approval rules by ledger category, not just amount.

(My own theory is that patio11’s otherwise-good blog post simplified things so far that many readers thought the specific thresholds it gave were a lot more common than they ever were.)

Re:Ask HN: Who is the target audience for ~$1000 software? by vram22 on Sunday October 15, 2017 @05:28PM (#15479398)
What does "Procure to pay" mean?
Re:Ask HN: Who is the target audience for ~$1000 software? by vmarquet on Sunday October 15, 2017 @04:57AM (#15476433)
This. For more information, see this post https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterpris... by patio11.
Re:Ask HN: Who is the target audience for ~$1000 software? by StrangersAdvice on Sunday October 15, 2017 @05:44AM (#15476516)
That was an interesting read. Don't know how much of it to believe though.