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Frameworks, core principles and top case studies for SaaS pricing, learnt and refined over 28+ years of SaaS-monetization experience.
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Togai is a billing infrastructure platform that automates metering, rating, and invoicing for usage-based pricing models. Monetizely is a pricing strategy consultancy that determines what to charge, how to package, and how to position your pricing. Most B2B SaaS companies need strategy first (Monetizely), then implementation infrastructure (Togai). Think of it this way: a pricing consultant designs your pricing architecture; billing platforms execute it. Using billing software without pricing strategy is like building a house without blueprints—the tools work fine, but you're building the wrong thing.
Introduction: The Pricing Strategy vs. Implementation Confusion
If you’re searching for a SaaS pricing consultant, you’ve probably noticed something strange: billing platforms are publishing “pricing strategy” content and “consulting” pages—even though their core product is infrastructure.
This is where many SaaS leaders get stuck:
Do we need a pricing strategy consultant or a billing platform like Togai? Or both? And in what order?
The confusion is understandable:
- Billing platforms talk about “pricing models” and “experiments,” which sounds strategic.
- Pricing consultants talk about “monetization infrastructure readiness,” which sounds technical.
- Internally, product, finance, sales, and engineering all use the word “pricing,” but mean different things.
Underneath the jargon, there are actually two completely different problems:
What should we charge, how should we structure it, and why?
→ This is pricing strategy (Monetizely’s world).How do we meter usage, calculate charges, and send accurate invoices at scale?
→ This is billing infrastructure (Togai’s world).
When SaaS companies confuse these, they make a costly mistake: they implement the wrong pricing model extremely efficiently.
The costly mistake: automating broken pricing
We recently worked with a B2B SaaS company (mid-market, >$20M ARR) that had invested heavily in billing automation:
- They implemented a flexible billing platform.
- Engineering spent months wiring up usage tracking and complex rating logic.
- Finance finally got out of spreadsheets and manual invoices.
The problem? Their underlying pricing model was fundamentally misaligned with value:
- Wrong value metric (charging per user where value was tied to data volume).
- Overly generous discounts that weren’t governed by any framework.
- Enterprise customers capped their usage and churned when they hit internal limits.
They had world-class billing infrastructure automating a pricing model that was leaving millions on the table.
When we ran willingness-to-pay research and value driver analysis, we found:
- They could increase ARPU by 25–40% with a new value metric and packaging architecture.
- Their top 10 enterprise customers were under-monetized by 2–3x.
- Many “price-sensitive” objections were actually model objections, not level objections.
They didn’t need a different billing platform. They needed pricing strategy first, then better use of the infrastructure they already had.
Understanding the difference between a billing platform vs. consultant is critical before you spend a dollar on tools or consulting.
What Togai Actually Does (And Does Exceptionally Well)
Togai is not a pricing consultant. Togai is world-class billing infrastructure for modern, often usage-based, SaaS monetization.
If Monetizely is the architect designing your pricing system, Togai is a highly capable construction team and toolset that builds the billing machinery to support that design.
Here’s what Togai actually does.
Metering and usage tracking infrastructure
For any usage-based or hybrid pricing model, the first technical challenge is:
How do we precisely track what customers are doing in our product?
Togai solves this by providing:
- Event collection and metering: SDKs and APIs to send detailed product events (e.g., API calls, data processed, seats activated).
- Flexible usage definitions: Ability to define what counts as billable usage—e.g., “GB of data processed per month” or “number of automated workflows executed.”
- Aggregation and normalization: Turning noisy event streams into countable, billable units that finance can use confidently.
This is heavy engineering work if you do it from scratch. Togai abstracts most of it away.
Rating engine and complex billing calculations
Once usage is tracked, you need to translate it into dollars. Togai’s rating engine handles:
- Per-unit pricing: $X per unit (e.g., $0.05 per GB).
- Tiered and volume pricing: Different unit prices depending on usage bands.
- Commitments and overages: Prepaid packages with overage charges above thresholds.
- Minimums, discounts, and credits: All the complexity you see in real enterprise contracts.
This is where Togai shines: if you already know what your pricing model is, they make “how do we calculate and bill this?” a solved problem.
Multi-model billing support (usage-based, hybrid, tiered)
Modern SaaS rarely fits a single pricing archetype. Most companies end up with:
- Hybrid models: Base subscription + variable usage.
- Multiple value metrics: E.g., seats + data volume + feature add-ons.
- Different packages by segment: SMB self-serve vs. enterprise contracts.
Togai supports:
- Pure subscription models.
- Pure pay-as-you-go usage.
- Any combination of the two, plus add-ons, tiered packages, and negotiated contracts.
Importantly: Togai doesn’t tell you which model to choose. They make it easy to implement whichever model you decide on.
Integration with quote-to-cash systems
Billing does not exist in a vacuum. It has to integrate with:
- CRM and CPQ: Salesforce, HubSpot, or Salesforce CPQ for quotes and contracts.
- Payment processors: Stripe, Adyen, etc., for collecting payments.
- Accounting and ERP: NetSuite, QuickBooks, or similar for revenue recognition and reporting.
- Customer portals: So customers can see their usage and invoices in real time.
Togai focuses heavily on this integration layer, with:
- 30+ native integrations across the quote-to-cash stack.
- Webhooks and APIs for custom workflows.
- Support for complex enterprise environments.
This is a core reason many companies adopt Togai after they’ve outgrown basic Stripe Billing or custom scripts.
Implementation services and technical support
Togai also provides:
- Solution architects and implementation engineers who help you:
- Instrument metering.
- Configure rating logic.
- Connect systems and data flows.
- Ongoing support for evolving your billing as your product and contracts grow more complex.
These experts are deeply experienced in billing systems, but they are not pricing strategists. Their mandate is to implement the pricing model you’ve chosen—not to decide what it should be.
In short:
Togai is exceptional at billing automation for SaaS. It’s the right choice when your biggest challenge is, “We know our pricing model; we just need robust infrastructure to execute it.”
What Monetizely Actually Does (The Strategic Layer)
Monetizely is a pricing strategy consultant, not a billing platform. Our work comes before Togai (or any infrastructure) in the value chain.
We answer the what, why, and how of your pricing model, so that when you implement in Togai, Stripe, Chargebee, or anything else, you’re executing the right strategy.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
Pricing model architecture and transformation
We work with SaaS companies to define the overall monetization architecture:
- Subscription vs. usage-based vs. hybrid.
- Self-serve vs. sales-led vs. product-led monetization layers.
- How packaging, add-ons, and contracts fit together.
This often takes the form of a pricing model transformation, such as:
- Moving from “per-seat only” to “base + usage” to better match value.
- Designing a product-led growth motion alongside an enterprise tier.
- Re-architecting legacy pricing that was set at $2M ARR but now must support $40M+.
For example, in our Keepit $40M ARR transformation project, we:
- Redefined their value metric to better align with core customer value.
- Introduced a clearer packaging structure for mid-market vs. enterprise.
- Built a multi-phase migration plan to move existing contracts without causing churn shocks.
All of that came before any billing system changes.
Willingness-to-pay research and conjoint analysis
Unlike billing platforms, we don’t guess at prices. We run quantitative pricing research to understand what customers will actually pay.
Common methods we use:
Conjoint analysis:
Simulates real-world trade-offs customers make between features, prices, and packages to find optimal combinations.Van Westendorp price sensitivity analysis:
Identifies thresholds where prices feel too cheap, cheap, expensive, and too expensive.Gabor-Granger and price elasticity testing:
Measures demand at different price points to optimize revenue, not just conversion.
We combine this with qualitative interviews and deal data analysis to answer:
- What should your headline price levels be by tier?
- How much more will customers pay for premium features or enterprise capabilities?
- Where are you leaving money on the table—or risking churn?
This is the core of “What should we charge?”
Value metric selection and packaging strategy
Choosing the wrong value metric (what you charge on) is one of the most expensive mistakes in SaaS.
We help you determine:
- Should you charge per user, per seat, per API call, per GB, per transaction, per workspace, or something else?
- Should your metric be simple but imperfect, or more complex but highly aligned with value?
- When does a hybrid metric make sense (e.g., seats + usage)?
Then we design your packaging strategy:
- Good–Better–Best tier structures.
- Feature allocation across tiers to drive natural upgrades.
- Add-ons and usage bundles to capture advanced value.
Billing platforms like Togai can meter and bill whatever metric you define—but they don’t determine what that metric should be. That’s a strategic pricing question.
Competitive positioning and market analysis
We also look outside your product at:
- How direct competitors and adjacent solutions are priced.
- Where your pricing sits on the spectrum: premium vs. value vs. disruptive.
- How your messaging and positioning support (or undermine) your pricing power.
We often find that “pricing problems” are actually:
- Positioning problems (you’re perceived as a commodity).
- Segmentation problems (you’re overserving some customers and underserving others).
Our work aligns pricing, packaging, and positioning so that your pricing tells the right story in the market.
Discount strategy and deal desk optimization
Enterprise deals are rarely won at list price. But if discounting is unmanaged, you quickly:
- Erode margins.
- Train customers to wait for discounts.
- Create chaos between sales, finance, and leadership.
We develop:
- Discount frameworks and guardrails by segment and deal size.
- Approval workflows (who can approve what).
- Playbooks and talk tracks for sales to defend value and price.
- Deal review and win–loss analysis to continuously refine.
Togai can technically apply discounts you configure. Monetizely defines what those discounts should be, when they’re justified, and how to govern them.
Multi-phase pricing transformation management
Pricing changes are rarely a one-and-done switch. We usually guide clients through a multi-phase transformation:
Discovery & diagnostics
Internal data review, customer interviews, competitor analysis.Design & validation
Modeling, research (conjoint, Van Westendorp), testing with customers.Rollout & migration planning
Playbooks for:
- Grandfathering vs. migrating existing customers.
- Communication strategy for each segment.
- Sales enablement and objection handling.
- Measurement & optimization
Tracking impact on:
- Win rates.
- Expansion, ARPU, NRR.
- Churn and customer health.
We coordinate with your product, finance, and RevOps teams—and implementation partners like Togai—so strategy and infrastructure move in sync.
The Critical Questions Each Solves
Use this comparison to see whether you need a SaaS pricing consultant like Monetizely, a billing platform like Togai, or both.
| Question | Togai | Monetizely |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| What should we charge? | Not their focus – they bill what you tell them to charge. | Core deliverable through willingness-to-pay research and competitive analysis. |
| Should we use usage-based, subscription, or hybrid pricing? | They support all models but don’t tell you which to choose. | Strategic recommendation based on your product, market, and customer segments. |
| What’s the right value metric? | Will meter whatever metric you define. | Determines optimal value metric through customer research and competitive analysis. |
| How do we structure our packaging tiers? | Not their expertise – they execute whatever tiers you create. | Designs tier structure, feature allocation, and Good–Better–Best positioning. |
| How do we calculate and bill complex usage scenarios? | Core strength – sophisticated rating engine and metering. | Not our focus – we recommend implementation partners like Togai. |
| Should we grandfather existing customers or migrate them? | Can technically execute either, with version control features. | Strategic guidance on migration timing, communication, and customer segmentation. |
| How do we integrate billing with Stripe/Salesforce/NetSuite? | Core capability with 30+ native integrations. | Not our focus – implementation is for partners or internal teams. |
| What discount strategy should we use? | Can apply discounts you configure, but doesn’t determine discount policy. | Develops discount frameworks, guardrails, and sales enablement. |
Bottom line:
- Togai solves: “How do we meter, calculate, and invoice what we’ve decided to charge?”
- Monetizely solves: “What should we charge, how should we structure it, and why?”
You rarely want one instead of the other—you want them in the right sequence.
When You Need Strategy First (Red Flags You Need Monetizely)
If you’re unsure whether you need a pricing strategy consultant right now, look for these red flags. If several apply, infrastructure is not your first problem—strategy is.
- You’re not sure if your current pricing model is optimal
- You have a model (per seat, per project, etc.), but you can’t articulate why it’s the best choice.
- Conversations about monetization feel opinion-based and political.
- You’ve never done willingness-to-pay research with customers
- Pricing was set by “what competitors charge” or “what felt reasonable.”
- You’ve never run conjoint, Van Westendorp, or structured pricing surveys.
- Your sales team is negotiating discounts without clear guardrails
- Every enterprise deal is “special.”
- Sales says, “Pricing is a barrier,” but you lack a framework to evaluate this.
- You’re considering switching from subscription to usage-based pricing
- Product usage varies widely across customers.
- You worry about revenue volatility, adoption friction, and implementation cost.
- You lack data and research to decide if usage-based is right for your market and product.
- You’re launching in a new market or targeting enterprise vs. SMB
- Moving from SMB to mid-market/enterprise or expanding internationally.
- Existing pricing may not make sense for new segments, deal sizes, or procurement processes.
- Your pricing hasn’t changed in 2+ years despite product evolution
- You’ve shipped significant new capabilities, but price and packaging stayed flat.
- Expansion revenue is lower than expected.
- You’re losing deals and suspect pricing is the issue
- Sales hears “too expensive” or “confusing pricing” frequently.
- Discounting more doesn’t reliably fix it.
- You’re unsure what value metric to charge on
- Internally, there are multiple candidate metrics, but no data-driven decision.
- Engineering is asking, “What exactly do we need to meter?” and you don’t have a crisp answer.
- Your competitors have different pricing approaches and you’re unsure of positioning
- One charges per user, one per transaction, another with a hybrid model.
- You don’t know whether to follow, differentiate, or disrupt.
- You need to justify pricing changes to investors or your board
- You feel pricing must change, but you know “we think this is better” isn’t enough.
- You need a credible, research-backed strategy and financial modeling.
Key insight:
If you can’t confidently answer “why this price, why this model, why this metric” with data, you need pricing strategy before infrastructure.
Get a Pricing Strategy Assessment
Not sure if you need pricing strategy or billing infrastructure? Book a 30-minute pricing assessment with Monetizely. We’ll help you understand what phase you’re in and what you need next—even if that’s a platform like Togai, not consulting.
When You Need Implementation (Signs You’re Ready for Togai)
On the other hand, if your pricing strategy is clear and validated, your bottleneck might be implementation. That’s when Togai is the right next investment.
Here are the green flags that you’re ready for a billing platform like Togai.
- You’ve validated your pricing model with customer research
- You’ve tested pricing with customers and/or prospects.
- Leadership alignment exists on model (subscription vs. usage), levels, and packaging.
- You have clear pricing architecture designed
- Tiers, add-ons, and value metrics are defined.
- There’s a documented pricing schema you can hand to engineering and finance.
- Your billing calculations are too complex for Stripe or manual processes
- Multiple usage metrics, tiered thresholds, or bespoke enterprise contracts.
- Spreadsheets and custom scripts are breaking under the load.
- You need to meter usage across multiple dimensions
- For example: per workspace + per GB + per automation.
- Engineering is spending significant effort just to keep billing logic working.
- You’re scaling to hundreds or thousands of customers
- Manual invoicing is no longer feasible.
- Errors are starting to creep into billing, causing trust issues.
- You need real-time usage visibility for customers
- Customers want dashboards showing usage vs. commitments.
- Your current setup can’t surface accurate, timely data.
- You’re spending excessive engineering time on billing logic
- Billing features dominate platform roadmap.
- Every new pricing experiment turns into a multi-sprint engineering project.
- You need to support prepaid credits, overages, and complex contracts
- Enterprise deals involve commits, true-ups, custom bundles.
- Your existing tooling is rigid or brittle.
- You require integrations with enterprise systems (NetSuite, Salesforce CPQ)
- Finance and RevOps need clean handoffs from quote to cash to reporting.
- Data reconciliation between systems is painful.
- You need audit-trail and compliance capabilities for billing
- You’re facing more rigorous audits or regulatory requirements.
- You need clear visibility into how every charge was calculated.
Key insight:
Togai is perfect when you know what to build (your pricing strategy is clear) but need sophisticated infrastructure to execute it at scale.
Why Most B2B SaaS Companies Need Both (The Right Sequence)
For most B2B SaaS companies, the winning path is not “Togai vs. pricing consultant.” It’s:
- Strategy first.
- Infrastructure second.
- Ongoing optimization with both.
Phase 1: Pricing Strategy & Design (Monetizely)
This is where we:
- Diagnose your current state (performance, perceptions, competitive positioning).
- Design and validate your pricing model, value metric, and packaging.
- Build migration and rollout plans.
Typical investment: $50K–$300K, depending on scope, size, and complexity.
Typical ROI: 10–20x in the first 12–18 months, via:
- Higher ARPU.
- Better win rates.
- Stronger expansion and NRR.
- Reduced discounting.
Phase 2: Technical Implementation & Billing (Togai or similar)
Once strategy is defined, you evaluate and implement billing infrastructure:
- Choose between Togai and other platforms based on fit (usage complexity, stack, scale).
- Implement metering, rating, and integrations.
- Launch new pricing in production.
Typical investment:
- Setup/implementation: varies widely, often in the $25K–$150K range for mid-market/enterprise complexity.
- Ongoing platform fees: commonly $2K–$10K+ per month, depending on volume and features.
This is where Togai excels. Many Monetizely clients adopt Togai or similar platforms once the pricing blueprint is locked.
Phase 3: Ongoing Optimization (Both)
Pricing is not “set and forget.” The most successful companies:
- Regularly revisit pricing strategy based on:
- Product evolution.
- Market changes.
- New segments and regions.
- Use billing infrastructure to:
- A/B test elements of pricing.
- Monitor usage and monetization patterns.
- Support new experiments faster.
In this phase:
- Monetizely leads ongoing pricing optimization and experimentation strategy.
- Togai (or your chosen platform) enables rapid deployment of those experiments.
Case example: A complete pricing transformation journey
A (confidential) infrastructure SaaS company we worked with followed this trajectory:
- Before Monetizely:
- Flat per-seat pricing, heavy discounting.
- No clear value metric; enterprise deals were deeply customized.
- Manual billing using Stripe + spreadsheets.
- Phase 1 – Strategy (Monetizely):
- Ran conjoint and customer value research across SMB, mid-market, and enterprise.
- Shifted to a hybrid model: platform fee + usage-based component tied to a core value metric.
- Introduced a clear three-tier packaging structure with defined add-ons.
- Phase 2 – Implementation (Togai-like platform):
- Implemented metering for usage metric plus commitments and overages.
- Integrated billing with Salesforce and NetSuite.
- Launched a new customer portal with real-time usage visibility.
- Outcomes in 12 months:
- 30% increase in average contract value.
- 15% improvement in win rate for target segments.
- Sales discounting reduced by 40% due to stronger positioning and guardrails.
- Finance and RevOps reclaimed weeks of manual work per month.
The infrastructure investment only paid off because the underlying pricing strategy was right.
Key takeaway:
Perfect execution of the wrong pricing model still fails. Strategy must precede implementation. The companies that win do both, in sequence.
Common Mistakes Companies Make
Here are the patterns we see repeatedly—and how to avoid them.
Mistake 1: Buying billing infrastructure before validating pricing strategy
Consequence:
You automate a pricing model that doesn’t align with customer value. Fixing it later means rework in both pricing and systems, plus customer confusion during migrations.Solution:
Start with a 3–6 month strategy engagement (with Monetizely or a similar SaaS pricing consultant), then implement infrastructure with clear requirements.
Mistake 2: Assuming billing platforms provide pricing expertise
Consequence:
Implementation engineers and solutions architects are forced into strategic decisions they aren’t incentivized or equipped to make. Pricing becomes a byproduct of what’s easy to implement, not what’s optimal.Solution:
Recognize the different skill sets:Engineering / implementation: excellent for “How do we build this?”
Pricing strategy: needed for “What should we build, and why?”
Use Togai for infrastructure, Monetizely for strategy.
Mistake 3: Trying to DIY pricing strategy to save money
Consequence:
Months of internal debate, PowerPoint wars, and gut-feel decisions. No structured research, no quantified willingness to pay, and often a conservative outcome that leaves major revenue untapped.Solution:
Treat pricing like a core growth lever. Strategic consulting often delivers 10–20x ROI in year one. The cost of getting pricing wrong is far higher than the cost of external expertise.
Mistake 4: Implementing pricing changes without customer research
Consequence:
You risk:Churn spikes from loyal customers who feel blindsided.
Sales pushback and “shadow pricing” to protect relationships.
Emergency rollbacks that damage credibility.
Solution:
Validate with:Conjoint studies to test different structures and levels.
Van Westendorp to identify acceptable price ranges.
Targeted customer interviews.
Then pair the research with a structured migration and communication plan.
Decision Framework: Which Do You Need Right Now?
Use this simple decision tree to figure out whether you need Monetizely (pricing strategy), Togai (billing infrastructure), or both.
- START: Do you have a clearly defined, validated pricing strategy?
Can you explain, with data, why you use your current pricing model, levels, and value metrics?
Have you tested this with customers and/or prospects?
If NO → You need Monetizely (or a similar pricing strategy consultant).
Start with strategy. Don’t lock unvalidated decisions into code and contracts.If YES → go to Question 2.
- Is your billing process holding you back from executing that strategy?
Do you struggle to meter usage accurately?
Are calculations, invoices, and integrations brittle or manual?
Are you unable to experiment with pricing without major engineering work?
If YES → You need Togai (or similar billing infrastructure).
You’re ready to invest in a platform to operationalize your strategy.If NO → go to Question 3.
- Are you looking to optimize and refine an already-working system?
Pricing generally works, but you want to:
- Improve win rate.
- Increase ARPU.
- Reduce discounting.
- Explore new segments.
If YES → You likely benefit from ongoing optimization with both:
- Monetizely for strategic experiments and research.
- Your billing platform (Togai or otherwise) for rapid execution and data.
If NO →
You may not need significant new investments yet—monitor your metrics, and revisit when you see the red or green flags described earlier.
Get a Pricing Strategy Assessment
Not sure where you are in this decision tree? Book a 30-minute pricing assessment with Monetizely. We’ll help you understand whether your next investment should be strategy, infrastructure, or both—and in what order.
Conclusion: Strategy First, Infrastructure Second, Both for Long-Term Success
To wrap up, here are the key takeaways on pricing strategy vs. billing infrastructure:
Pricing strategy (what/why) must precede billing implementation (how).
Decide your pricing model, value metric, levels, packaging, and discount strategy before you bake them into systems.Togai and Monetizely solve completely different problems.
Togai: world-class billing platform and pricing infrastructure.
Monetizely: SaaS pricing consultant defining what you should charge and how.
Most successful B2B SaaS companies invest in both.
They use Monetizely (or similar) to architect pricing, and Togai (or similar) to operationalize it at scale.The sequence matters: strategy → implementation → optimization.
Getting strategy wrong is often 10x more expensive than getting implementation wrong. You can swap platforms; it’s much harder to undo years of misaligned pricing.Don’t confuse content marketing with actual service offerings.
When a platform talks about “pricing strategy,” read carefully: are they truly doing research and strategic design, or just offering configuration help and best practices?
If you’re asking, “Do I need a pricing consultant or billing software?” the honest answer is usually: both, but not at the same time.
Start with the blueprint. Then bring in the best tools and builders to execute it.
Get a Pricing Strategy Assessment
Not sure if you need pricing strategy or billing infrastructure? Book a 30-minute pricing assessment with Monetizely. We’ll help you understand what phase you’re in and what you need next—even if that’s a platform like Togai, not consulting.