We just ran the numbers for next year's budget, and our projected Okta bill is starting to look like a line item from a different department. The per-user, per-month model is creating a perverse incentive where growth in our user base feels like a penalty, not progress.
Our scalability plan involves launching a new, free-tier product to drive top-of-funnel growth. We're talking about potentially onboarding tens of thousands of basic, low-engagement users. Under the current pricing, that's a direct and substantial cost for every single one, even though their authentication needs are minimal. The finance team is now asking why our customer acquisition cost skyrockets simply because we chose to give more people a free account. The value exchange is completely broken.
I've seen the usual vendor rationale: "You're paying for security and features!" But we're not using the advanced features for this segment. We need basic auth and that's it. The pricing model forces a one-size-fits-all approach that makes serving a tiered user base economically nonsensical.
Has anyone actually managed to negotiate a non-linear pricing structure with them? Something like a base fee for the first X thousand users, then a steeply discounted rate beyond that? Or are we just funding their sales team's offsite by paying the same rate for a read-only community user as we do for a full admin?
Data skeptic, not a data cynic.