I suppose it's the elastic nature of the pricing that you find complex? I can't disagree with you, it is less straightforward than flat monthly plans. However it is what litteraly thousands of developers have been asking us for over the last year. Our previous pricing was focused on simplicity... but ended up sweeping the reality of our product under tbe rug.
I think you're right that we don't explain enough on the pricing page. Our concern was text overload., but there's probably a balance to be found.
What about the content - any opinion on our actual pricing?
I think it's important to note that the page is about pricing, but 99% of the info isn't a price. Above the fold there's only one price, which you have to use in calculating the actual value yourself. Way, way down are the examples, but they might or might not represent what a customer's workload will look like, so they still don't really have what they came to the page for. Getting the customer their own price, super-fast, (assuming it's a good one) is the path to showing why you guys are so fantastic.
Also there could be small hints next to the slider (yes, I'm a fan of sliders;)) as it snaps into the various positions...
But those are again just ideas. You should get a good designer on the case, this is their bread & butter.
Have a slider. When you move it have a window that lists what applications can be served with the selected allotment.
Hell... that'd be pretty damn cool looking
But that's just my gut reaction. What you really need is a webdesigner who can lay down an approachable visualization for such a complex pricing scheme (which will probably involve sliders, and also big honking tooltips).
As for your actual pricing - I don't know. It wasn't obvious from the page what a small/medium/large deployment would cost and I didn't bother to fire up excel to figure out a number that you should absolutely spoon-feed me.
I don't want to click through 5+ random scenarios to perhaps find one that comes close to what I have in mind.
Well, at the risk of repeating myself. You seem to be generating revenue already, so I would seriously look into hiring a designer for this (or make a contest or such).
My gut feeling is that you're so deep into all this (which is generally good!) that you have a hard time reviewing it through the eyes of a first-time visitor.
The page doesn't mention whether it's per day, month, or year for example, but they seem to be taking feedback from a couple of the other comments.
Not sure why you've been downvoted for this, seems a bit harsh.
I can't get the examples to come out right. Looking at the 3rd one for $172.80, if i get out my calculator and crunch, it looks like it should be $112.32 to me.
(256 x 1) + (448 x 1) + (128 x 1) = 832 total MB RAM
at $0.006 per 32MB ram per hour you get $4.32 per month per each block of 32 MB
832 / 32 = 26 blocks of 32 MB RAM
26 x 4.32 = $112.32
what am i doing wrong here?
Thanks for pointing that out.
Your pricing scheme is extraordinarily complex and the page does the poorest possible job at explaining anything. Heck, it doesn't even mention that RAM is your discriminator - it simply implies it as if that was natural.
Moreover none of the terms are explained (what is "Vertical Scaling", what is "Proportional to application memory")...
There is not even a calculator/slider to get a rough idea of actual cost without engaging in Excel-gymnastics.
You should seriously get outside help for this.