SaaS-enabled services -> transitioning from a service first to SaaS first revenu model

#2-pricing-questions
1

Looking for insights from those who’ve worked on SaaS transitions in service-heavy orgs:

I’m advising a civic tech company (voca.city) that helps public orgs and governments implement Decidim, an open-source platform for participatory democracy.

They currently operate as a high-touch service org, providing hosting, configuration, and facilitation, with ~80% of revenue coming from services and ~20% from recurring product fees. Their ambition is to shift to a model with a 50/50 revenue mix.

I don’t believe a pure SaaS model is realistic in the next 12–24 months because their clients (municipalities, NGOs) require too much support, and the product isn’t fully self-serve yet.

Does anyone know good frameworks or examples for breaking down a value proposition like this into tiered bundles or modular offers to start pulling apart what’s product vs what’s premium support?

Appreciate any pointers!

1 Like
2

I haven’t worked with a company like this personally, but have a couple thoughts:

  1. Bardeen is a SaaS company that recently started adding specific services allotments into their GBB packaging strategy. Wrote about it here. In their case, they build AI Playbooks for their customers, and as you move up to new tiers, you get more playbooks. Playbooks are also tied to services hours, so it creates a solid upgrade path.
  2. Ulrik has covered Services in depth in a past webinar. I think you’ll probably find some gold in there.

Hope that helps! Sounds like a really interesting project.

3

Thanks @Rob_Litterst !
Webinar and the Bardeen example were very insightful and comforts my strategy of tying Service scope and access to the different packages.
I’ll keep you posted, thanks for taking the time to answer!

1 Like
4

@Laure_S

What I feel about voca.city is:

First, analyze the existing data to see how frequently ad hoc premium requests occur. The offering should be designed like a core product plan with add-ons. Since the goal is to increase recurring revenue:

- Core product features, such as hosting, should be part of all plans.

- Less frequently used services can be offered as entitlements and used to justify higher plan prices.

- Premium support should be structured using a tiered or packaged pricing model. Customers can purchase this along with the plan. Each entitlement (such as premium support) should have clear pricing.

If you’re offering premium support as a packaged entitlement (ex: 10 usd / package), define the package size. For example, you might offer a plan where one package includes 20 support units, and customers can purchase up to 2 packages (2 × 20 = 40 support units) on base plans. You could also create an advanced plan that allows the purchase of up to 10 packages. These numbers should be based on analysis of historical usage data.

If you choose a tiered model instead, make sure to provide separate pricing for each threshold, again based on usage data.

The transition might be a bit tricky, so make sure to support grandfathering, existing customers should not be affected by these changes. Only new customers should be subject to the new model. Over time, you can encourage existing customers to migrate to the new plans.