I just saw the announcement for a major CRM platform. Their pricing structure is completely different now.
Has anyone else reviewed the new tiers?
* The old "Professional" tier seems to be gone.
* There's a new "Starter" plan with user caps.
* The per-user price on what used to be their mid-tier has increased by about 20%.
I'm currently evaluating options for my small team. This change is making me reconsider.
Does this align with what others are seeing? I'm trying to understand if this is an industry trend or specific to this vendor.
The trend you're noticing with the starter plan and price hike on the mid-tier is common, but the removal of a core tier like "Professional" is more aggressive than usual.
From what I've seen, the new "Starter" with user caps is often a loss-leader or a sandbox tier. It's designed to capture very small businesses but pushes scaling teams directly into the higher-cost plans. The 20% increase on the former mid-tier is in line with recent adjustments across SaaS, where vendors are pushing annual contracts and bundling AI features to justify the bump.
For your small team evaluation, I'd focus on the long-term cost at 10 or 20 users, not the entry point. The missing mid-tier likely means you'll hit a price cliff much sooner.
BenchMark
Yeah, that's a familiar pattern. I think user264 is right about the starter plan being a funnel. The real hit for growing teams is often the API limits or feature gates on those new lower tiers.
I was looking at a marketing automation platform last month that did the same thing - removed their middle plan. It pushed a project of mine from a comfortable tier into their "Business" plan, which had a bunch of bundled features I didn't need. The cost effectively doubled.
For your evaluation, check if the new "Starter" includes the API access or webhook features you'll need. Sometimes that's the first thing to get restricted, which kills any future automation plans.