Guides — 24
Guides
Explainers for the questions that are not “which of these two”. Same discipline as the comparisons: every figure a token resolved from the record, every claim dated.
MethodWhen a price disappears: telling a withdrawn tier from a reshuffled page from a rebuilt oneA figure that was on a pricing page last week and is not there this week can mean a plan was withdrawn, a ladder was reorganised, or the page was…MethodWhen there is no price: the several different ways a pricing page fails to answerA missing price is not one thing. It can be a decision, a rendering choice, an empty placeholder, another company's price, or a discount with nothing…MethodWhen one ladder counts in different periods: the allowance that looks twenty times biggerAn entry plan allows five documents a month. The plan above allows a hundred a year. Read as printed that is a twentyfold jump; put on a common…MethodWhen a category label is not a market: a three-hundredfold range under one headingIn one software category the dearest vendor's cheapest plan costs ten times the cheapest vendor's most expensive plan. The two ladders do not overlap…MethodUptime monitoring: priced per thing you watch, and one vendor has no plan price at allOne provider bundles monitors into tiers where the cost per monitor falls by more than half as you climb. Another has no plan price whatsoever — its…MethodTwelve ways a pricing page fails to tell you the price, ranked by how much they misleadA page that publishes nothing is honest. A page that publishes a zero where a paid plan's price belongs is the dangerous one, and the two are…MethodThe struck-through price: when a 'was' figure can be checked, and when it cannotOne vendor's crossed-out price is exactly five times its live one on every single tier. Another's is arithmetic you can verify in your head. Both are…MethodThe price is not the bill: the fields that decide what you actually payEighty-two plans in our record describe a ceiling and seventy-six describe what is included. Those are the numbers that move a bill, and none of them…MethodThe VPN price that is not a month: how this category quotes, and what to compare insteadOne provider advertises a monthly figure beside its own annual price. Divide the annual price by twelve and you get between two and a half and three…MethodScheduling: a zero is not a price, and one lifetime licence pays back in ten weeksOne booking page serves a zero as the price of all four of its tiers, three of which are paid. The genuine zero on the free tier and the false ones…MethodProject tools: the annual discount is not a category norm, it is a per-tier decisionOne vendor discounts a sixth for paying yearly and another more than a third — and the second one's own page understates its own offer.MethodPassword managers: the price is settled, so compare year two and the free tier insteadOne major manager's advertised annual rate is a first-year offer for new customers, with the standing price a third higher and struck through in its…MethodIs that price per seat? The plan named after you is often the expensive oneTwenty-six plans in our record are priced per person rather than per account, and on several ladders the tier aimed at the smallest buyer carries the…MethodHelpdesk software: are you paying per person, or per conversation?Two vendors in the same category bill on opposite axes. On one, a fifth agent multiplies your bill by five. On the other, hiring four more people…MethodFree tiers: the limit that binds first is almost never the one you are watchingOne free plan allows unlimited people and unlimited tasks, and stops you at sixty megabytes. Another's real constraint is not its allowance at all…MethodForm builders: six vendors, six different things a headline price can meanOne publishes a floor. One publishes a crossed-out figure whose monthly equivalent appears nowhere on the page. One offers two months off and shows…MethodEmail marketing: the advertised price is a floor, and the ceiling behaves differently everywhereOne provider's price more than triples between a thousand subscribers and ten thousand. Another charges nothing at any subscriber count and takes a…MethodE-commerce: the plan that upgrades itself, and the fee that depends on how your buyer arrivedOne platform moves you to a dearer plan automatically when your sales cross a threshold. One marketplace charges three times as much when the buyer…MethodCredits: the one unit in software that does not get cheaper in bulkOn the only ladder in our record that prints both a price and a credit allowance at every tier, the price rises more than fiftyfold and the cost per…MethodCourse platforms: the cheap plan takes a cut, and the break-even is a number of studentsOne platform's entry tier charges a flat fee per paid enrolment. Work it out and the ladder inverts at exactly eleven enrolments a month — not…MethodCRM: the fee that is not monthly, and the annual price nobody printsOne product carries a required setup fee that comes to about half of everything you pay in the first year. Another never prints its annual rate at…MethodAutomation tools: a saving that does not exist, and a unit that gets dearer in bulkOne page offers forty per cent off for paying yearly, beside an annual price that is exactly twelve monthly payments. Another vendor's larger plan…PrivacyYour router tells your ISP every website you visitThe box in your hallway hands your provider a running list of every site you open; changing that takes about two minutes and costs nothing · Also in DE · ES · FRPrivacyReplacing Google tool by tool: the private stack, and what each row really costsSeven swaps, and the monthly bill at the bottom — every figure read from the vendor's own pricing page, and two rows deliberately left unpriced… · Also in DE