Usage-based pricing

Usage Based Pricing

Any company can successfully adopt usage-based pricing modeled after proven best  practices and frameworks that optimize the value being provided to the customer.

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Usage-based pricing

Usage Based Pricing

Any company can successfully adopt usage-based pricing modeled after proven best  practices and frameworks that optimize the value being provided to the customer.
Metered pricing and billing

Why Usage-Based Pricing (UBP)?

Usage-based pricing leads to demonstrable improvements in customer Net Retention Rate (NRR) and customer acquisition cost payback time. It provides a more flexible model that allows customers to pay only for what is used, and to scale usage up and down as needed, leading to better retention and reduced churn.

Enable product-led growth

UBP helps increase product adoption while providing a viable pathway to monetization once product value and fit have been confirmed.

Tame the elasticity of the cloud

Cloud infrastructure is inherently elastic, which necessitates elastic pricing to ensure healthy margins.

APIs for credit balance, drawdowns, true-ups

Real-time APIs and Webhooks for delivering actionable insights and
enabling immediate response.

Five easy steps

Build Usage-Based Pricing
with Amberflo

Accurately meter any resource or metric in real-time

Customize meter event data structure to include any additional metadata for use later on to filter, analyze, or even price the metered usage.

First, you need to identify what resources should be tracked and what metrics are required to completely reflect usage and backend costs for your system. Identify how the usage events should be aggregated and what (if any) additional metadata should be included with each event record as dimensions.

Once the meters are defined and created in Amberflo, we recommend that you leverage Amberflo SDKs to meter events at the source where they are being produced. This allows for the fewest ‘hops’ or actions with usage data and allows for real-time performance. If you cannot use an SDK to track usage, or if you already have usage records being stored in another location, Amberflo offers several different options for meter ingestion including via API, and using intermediate locations such as AWS S3, cloud databases like Snowflake and MongoDB, or even raw CSV files.

Leverage Usage and Costs Analytics to determine optimal pricing

After deploying meters to your solution, the raw events will begin flowing into Amberflo.

As they are ingested, the usage is viewable in the Metering Dashboard. There is no delay or custom configuration required, immediately as events are ingested, they are viewable and ready for analysis. Users can filter by customer, by meter, or even by custom dimension to easily address the questions listed above.

For recurring queries or reports, users can create Custom Reports and save them for easy access. This simplifies regular reporting tasks and provides immediate visibility to critical usage patterns and metrics. See the screenshot below for an example of a custom report with advanced search and filter options.

Build Pricing Plans that align with value

Now that usage is being tracked and aggregated in Amberflo, you are ready to begin building flexible usage-based pricing plans.

Amberflo provides options to customize plans with free units, discounts and promotions, fixed-rate add-on pricing, or add-ons based on a percentage of the invoice amount.

Product items are the line items or catalog items that will appear on invoices. Each product item is associated with a corresponding meter that tracks the usage. When adding a product item to a pricing plan you can configure how that usage will be priced, whether it be on a per-unit, per-block, or tiered model. You also have the option to price by dimension and configure custom rates based on unique dimension values or combinations of dimension values.

After all product items are added to the pricing plan, save and activate the plan. You can now assign the plan to customers to begin generating metered invoices and billing based on real-time usage.

Test and compare plans

At Amberflo, we recommend using the usage data from the metering service as your guide to identify the correct pricing vectors and usage-based rates.

Using this data, you will arrive at a data-backed pricing strategy that should scale based on your customers’ unique usage profiles. In the process of identifying the correct pricing model, you should iterate and experiment using multiple models and pricing strategies.

Enable dynamic, scaleable pricing

As usage rates and profiles will change over time, usage-based pricing should also be dynamic and change to remain optimal. It is important to constantly be analyzing usage patterns and customer usage profiles to see if a new pricing model or strategy would scale more appropriately.

Accurately meter any resource or metric in real-time

Customize meter event data structure to include any additional metadata for use later on to filter, analyze, or even price the metered usage.

First, you need to identify what resources should be tracked and what metrics are required to completely reflect usage and backend costs for your system. Identify how the usage events should be aggregated and what (if any) additional metadata should be included with each event record as dimensions.

Once the meters are defined and created in Amberflo, we recommend that you leverage Amberflo SDKs to meter events at the source where they are being produced. This allows for the fewest ‘hops’ or actions with usage data and allows for real-time performance. If you cannot use an SDK to track usage, or if you already have usage records being stored in another location, Amberflo offers several different options for meter ingestion including via API, and using intermediate locations such as AWS S3, cloud databases like Snowflake and MongoDB, or even raw CSV files.

Leverage Usage and Costs Analytics to determine optimal pricing

After deploying meters to your solution, the raw events will begin flowing into Amberflo.

As they are ingested, the usage is viewable in the Metering Dashboard. There is no delay or custom configuration required, immediately as events are ingested, they are viewable and ready for analysis. Users can filter by customer, by meter, or even by custom dimension to easily address the questions listed above.

For recurring queries or reports, users can create Custom Reports and save them for easy access. This simplifies regular reporting tasks and provides immediate visibility to critical usage patterns and metrics. See the screenshot below for an example of a custom report with advanced search and filter options.

Build Pricing Plans that align with value

Now that usage is being tracked and aggregated in Amberflo, you are ready to begin building flexible usage-based pricing plans.

Amberflo provides options to customize plans with free units, discounts and promotions, fixed-rate add-on pricing, or add-ons based on a percentage of the invoice amount.

Product items are the line items or catalog items that will appear on invoices. Each product item is associated with a corresponding meter that tracks the usage. When adding a product item to a pricing plan you can configure how that usage will be priced, whether it be on a per-unit, per-block, or tiered model. You also have the option to price by dimension and configure custom rates based on unique dimension values or combinations of dimension values.

After all product items are added to the pricing plan, save and activate the plan. You can now assign the plan to customers to begin generating metered invoices and billing based on real-time usage.

Test and compare plans

At Amberflo, we recommend using the usage data from the metering service as your guide to identify the correct pricing vectors and usage-based rates.

Using this data, you will arrive at a data-backed pricing strategy that should scale based on your customers’ unique usage profiles. In the process of identifying the correct pricing model, you should iterate and experiment using multiple models and pricing strategies.

Enable dynamic, scaleable pricing

As usage rates and profiles will change over time, usage-based pricing should also be dynamic and change to remain optimal. It is important to constantly be analyzing usage patterns and customer usage profiles to see if a new pricing model or strategy would scale more appropriately.

Platform centric

Billing operations
and analytics

Alerting and
webhooks

Up-level product and billing experience with customer and internal alerting

Realtime usage, cost, and billing analytics

Have a realtime pulse on usage and revenue operations

Hierarchies, groupings, and sub-accounts

Delight customers with custom invoices and reporting

Testimonials

Hear what our customers
have to say

Jonathan Nolan
SVP Engineering & Product

We surveyed the landscape and selected Amberflo as our metering and billing provider as it could scale to meet our high volume and high reliability needs, metering tens of billions of events per day.

Krishna Raj Raja
Founder & CEO

We shifted to usage-based pricing in record time using Amberflo. The realtime usage and billing insights enables our sales, support, and product teams to proactively formulate customer engagement and growth plans.

Zachary Smith
Managing Director

Building accurate, on-demand, and scalable Usage-Based Pricing and Billing solutions is hard. Amberflo's team has the right background and experience to solve this effectively.

Patrick O'Keeffe
SVP, Technology

Amberflo’s idea of separating metering from pricing and billing is a stroke of genius in my opinion because it lets you separate the conversations of 'what will we meter' and 'how will we price and package.

Itay Link
VP Finance

With Amberflo, we are able to delight our customers with accurate, on-demand real time billing and usage dashboards, which are an integrated part of our overall product experience.

Suman Kanuganti
Founder and CEO

We selected Amberflo because usage-based metering, pricing and billing is an integral part of our product experience and Amberflo platform had the flexibility and depth to meet our modern use case.

Jonathan Nolan
SVP Engineering & Product

We surveyed the landscape and selected Amberflo as our metering and billing provider as it could scale to meet our high volume and high reliability needs, metering tens of billions of events per day.

Krishna Raj Raja
Founder & CEO

We shifted to usage-based pricing in record time using Amberflo. The realtime usage and billing insights enables our sales, support, and product teams to proactively formulate customer engagement and growth plans.

Zachary Smith
Managing Director

Building accurate, on-demand, and scalable Usage-Based Pricing and Billing solutions is hard. Amberflo's team has the right background and experience to solve this effectively.

Patrick O'Keeffe
SVP, Technology

Amberflo’s idea of separating metering from pricing and billing is a stroke of genius in my opinion because it lets you separate the conversations of 'what will we meter' and 'how will we price and package.

Itay Link
VP Finance

With Amberflo, we are able to delight our customers with accurate, on-demand real time billing and usage dashboards, which are an integrated part of our overall product experience.

Suman Kanuganti
Founder and CEO

We selected Amberflo because usage-based metering, pricing and billing is an integral part of our product experience and Amberflo platform had the flexibility and depth to meet our modern use case.

Jonathan Nolan
SVP Engineering & Product

We surveyed the landscape and selected Amberflo as our metering and billing provider as it could scale to meet our high volume and high reliability needs, metering tens of billions of events per day.

Krishna Raj Raja
Founder & CEO

We shifted to usage-based pricing in record time using Amberflo. The realtime usage and billing insights enables our sales, support, and product teams to proactively formulate customer engagement and growth plans.

Zachary Smith
Managing Director

Building accurate, on-demand, and scalable Usage-Based Pricing and Billing solutions is hard. Amberflo's team has the right background and experience to solve this effectively.

Patrick O'Keeffe
SVP, Technology

Amberflo’s idea of separating metering from pricing and billing is a stroke of genius in my opinion because it lets you separate the conversations of 'what will we meter' and 'how will we price and package.

Itay Link
VP Finance

With Amberflo, we are able to delight our customers with accurate, on-demand real time billing and usage dashboards, which are an integrated part of our overall product experience.

Suman Kanuganti
Founder and CEO

We selected Amberflo because usage-based metering, pricing and billing is an integral part of our product experience and Amberflo platform had the flexibility and depth to meet our modern use case.

Jonathan Nolan
SVP Engineering & Product

We surveyed the landscape and selected Amberflo as our metering and billing provider as it could scale to meet our high volume and high reliability needs, metering tens of billions of events per day.

Krishna Raj Raja
Founder & CEO

We shifted to usage-based pricing in record time using Amberflo. The realtime usage and billing insights enables our sales, support, and product teams to proactively formulate customer engagement and growth plans.

Zachary Smith
Managing Director

Building accurate, on-demand, and scalable Usage-Based Pricing and Billing solutions is hard. Amberflo's team has the right background and experience to solve this effectively.

Patrick O'Keeffe
SVP, Technology

Amberflo’s idea of separating metering from pricing and billing is a stroke of genius in my opinion because it lets you separate the conversations of 'what will we meter' and 'how will we price and package.

Itay Link
VP Finance

With Amberflo, we are able to delight our customers with accurate, on-demand real time billing and usage dashboards, which are an integrated part of our overall product experience.

Suman Kanuganti
Founder and CEO

We selected Amberflo because usage-based metering, pricing and billing is an integral part of our product experience and Amberflo platform had the flexibility and depth to meet our modern use case.

Jonathan Nolan
SVP Engineering & Product

We surveyed the landscape and selected Amberflo as our metering and billing provider as it could scale to meet our high volume and high reliability needs, metering tens of billions of events per day.

Krishna Raj Raja
Founder & CEO

We shifted to usage-based pricing in record time using Amberflo. The realtime usage and billing insights enables our sales, support, and product teams to proactively formulate customer engagement and growth plans.

Zachary Smith
Managing Director

Building accurate, on-demand, and scalable Usage-Based Pricing and Billing solutions is hard. Amberflo's team has the right background and experience to solve this effectively.

Patrick O'Keeffe
SVP, Technology

Amberflo’s idea of separating metering from pricing and billing is a stroke of genius in my opinion because it lets you separate the conversations of 'what will we meter' and 'how will we price and package.

Itay Link
VP Finance

With Amberflo, we are able to delight our customers with accurate, on-demand real time billing and usage dashboards, which are an integrated part of our overall product experience.

Suman Kanuganti
Founder and CEO

We selected Amberflo because usage-based metering, pricing and billing is an integral part of our product experience and Amberflo platform had the flexibility and depth to meet our modern use case.

Jonathan Nolan
SVP Engineering & Product

We surveyed the landscape and selected Amberflo as our metering and billing provider as it could scale to meet our high volume and high reliability needs, metering tens of billions of events per day.

Krishna Raj Raja
Founder & CEO

We shifted to usage-based pricing in record time using Amberflo. The realtime usage and billing insights enables our sales, support, and product teams to proactively formulate customer engagement and growth plans.

Zachary Smith
Managing Director

Building accurate, on-demand, and scalable Usage-Based Pricing and Billing solutions is hard. Amberflo's team has the right background and experience to solve this effectively.

Patrick O'Keeffe
SVP, Technology

Amberflo’s idea of separating metering from pricing and billing is a stroke of genius in my opinion because it lets you separate the conversations of 'what will we meter' and 'how will we price and package.

Itay Link
VP Finance

With Amberflo, we are able to delight our customers with accurate, on-demand real time billing and usage dashboards, which are an integrated part of our overall product experience.

Suman Kanuganti
Founder and CEO

We selected Amberflo because usage-based metering, pricing and billing is an integral part of our product experience and Amberflo platform had the flexibility and depth to meet our modern use case.

Jonathan Nolan
SVP Engineering & Product

We surveyed the landscape and selected Amberflo as our metering and billing provider as it could scale to meet our high volume and high reliability needs, metering tens of billions of events per day.

Krishna Raj Raja
Founder & CEO

We shifted to usage-based pricing in record time using Amberflo. The realtime usage and billing insights enables our sales, support, and product teams to proactively formulate customer engagement and growth plans.

Zachary Smith
Managing Director

Building accurate, on-demand, and scalable Usage-Based Pricing and Billing solutions is hard. Amberflo's team has the right background and experience to solve this effectively.

Patrick O'Keeffe
SVP, Technology

Amberflo’s idea of separating metering from pricing and billing is a stroke of genius in my opinion because it lets you separate the conversations of 'what will we meter' and 'how will we price and package.

Itay Link
VP Finance

With Amberflo, we are able to delight our customers with accurate, on-demand real time billing and usage dashboards, which are an integrated part of our overall product experience.

Suman Kanuganti
Founder and CEO

We selected Amberflo because usage-based metering, pricing and billing is an integral part of our product experience and Amberflo platform had the flexibility and depth to meet our modern use case.

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