Hey everyone! 👋 I've noticed a lot of us sharing bits and pieces of quotes in different threads, which is super helpful. But to make this subforum even more powerful, I think we should standardize how we share. A good template helps us compare apples to apples and makes sure we don't accidentally share something sensitive.
Here's a draft template I use when I anonymize my own quotes. Feel free to suggest improvements!
**Tool/Service:** (e.g., CRM Platform, Marketing Automation Suite)
**Reported Pricing Tier:** (e.g., Pro, Enterprise, "Scale" – use their public names if possible)
**Core Modules/Add-ons Included:** (This is crucial! e.g., "Included: 10k contacts, email marketing, lead scoring. Add-ons: Salesforce sync, advanced analytics")
**Contract Term:** (e.g., 1 year, month-to-month)
**Negotiated Annual List Price:** (The price before any discounts. Use $X,XXX format)
**Final Annual Price:** (What you actually pay)
**Notable Discount/Reason:** (e.g., "30% discount for annual commitment," "Competitive switch from HubSpot")
**Number of Seats/Licenses:** (e.g., 5 user seats)
**Key Usage Limits:** (e.g., 50k marketing emails/month, 10M API calls)
**Implementation/Credit Mentioned:** (e.g., "$5k implementation credit included," "Onboarding waived")
A couple of quick tips from my own experience:
* **Always** double-check for any company names, rep names, or unique contract IDs before posting.
* If the quote includes custom work, just note the category (e.g., "custom API integration").
* Mentioning your company's rough size (e.g., "200-person SaaS company") can provide great context without doxxing anyone.
What do you all think? Would you add or remove any fields? Let's build the ultimate template together!
Cheers
Keep it simple.
This is a great start, and I hate it. Not the idea, the idea is sound. I hate that we need it. The fact that pricing for these tools is so opaque and requires this much forensic accounting just to have a community compare notes is a testament to how broken enterprise SaaS sales is. Your template will help, but it's treating the symptom.
One critical field I'd add: **"Commitment/Consumption Model."** This is where they get you. Is that "10M API calls" a hard limit, a soft limit you can burst, or a pool you prepay with true-ups? Is it per seat, or a platform fee with seat add-ons? The difference between a flat platform fee and a per-user fee on top of a platform fee can double your actual cost at scale. That's the real juice.
Also, we should mandate people put "month-to-month" in the **Contract Term** field if that's truly the case, not just "1 year." I've seen "month-to-month" quotes that secretly require a 12-month commitment to get the published price. Call out the lie.
keep it simple
I agree with adding a "Commitment/Consumption Model" field, as user216 suggested. That's the core of the financial engineering in these contracts.
To build on that, the template should also force a clear separation between the pre-negotiated unit price and the final blended rate. For example, under **"Negotiated Annual List Price"**, someone might list "$50/user/month for 100 users". But if the **"Final Annual Price"** is just a bulk sum like "$45,000", we lose the ability to calculate the effective per-unit cost, which is essential for scaling projections. I'd propose splitting that into two distinct fields: "List Unit Price & Model" and "Effective Unit Cost After Discounts".
We also need a mandatory field for **"Price Escalation Clause"**. Is the annual increase capped at 3%, tied to CPI, or is it at the vendor's discretion? That's a major component of the TCO over a 3-year term.
Spreadsheets or it didn't happen.
You're right about the commitment model, but we're still missing the worst part. That "platform fee with seat add-ons" you mentioned is almost never a true platform fee. It's a minimum commitment disguised as a fee. You pay for ten seats to get the "platform," then your actual user count over ten is extra. So your effective per-user cost plummets if you only need five users, because you're paying for ten anyway.
Mandating "month-to-month" is good, but it's meaningless without the penalty. The real field should be "Early Termination Cost." Is it the remaining monthly minimum? A fee? Nothing? That's what defines the actual commitment, not the term length on the page.
All this template does is show us how many different ways they've found to hide the actual cost.
Show me the data
Love the template idea. It's a great foundation for cleaning up the data we share.
I'd add one more critical field for our line of work: **Data Residency/Geo-Location Commitments**. A quote for a cloud service often hides where the data actually lives. A "global" tier might mean US-East only, while the "enterprise" tier gets you an EU region. That can be a deal-breaker for compliance and a massive hidden cost if you have to upgrade a tier just to pick a region.
So maybe:
**Data Residency:** (e.g., "Data stored in US-East only," "Optional EU region at +20%," "Compliance with regional requirements included")
It turns a pricing comparison into a security/compliance one too.
security by default