Re:Ask HN: `Contact Us` Pricing
by ricardobayes on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @04:31PM
(#33427072)
Exactly. This is the reason some smaller self-driving companies exist, even though Tesla has pretty much dominated the space. Tesla might have superior tech, but it's not for sale.
also if you screw up bad enough as a spacex customer and not meet their payload requirements after so many failed attempts then they refuse to ever do business with you again.
Re:Ask HN: `Contact Us` Pricing
by supernova87a on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @02:48AM
(#33432088)
SpaceX has years-long development timelines, huge capital and personnel costs, and huge liabilities/risks. Yet they can give you predictable pricing and understandable margins and cost models. Sure they are rigid in their requirements, but that pales in comparison to / is far from them using it as a pricing factor in comparison with the requirements asked of a sales guy selling a software team's services.
At the heart of it, the ridiculous pricing practices of "contact us" pricing are to test what a customer is willing to pay.
Have a look at this ML-favorite lately. $50/month for a general user turns into something you will not believe for corporate users. Totally testing what they can get away with. https://wandb.ai/site/pricing
Enterprise SaaS is the exact opposite. The product that is listed on the website is just a starting point. There are teams of sales reps, account managers, solutions architects and more who will customize it exactly to the customer's liking, and all that needs to be priced.