Announcing our new payment plan for the Cronofy Scheduler
We're happy to share that going forward, we'll only charge Cronofy Scheduler users if they use the tool to book meetings.
Cronofy is the scheduling platform for business. While conventional scheduling tools are focused on booking external meetings with third parties, Cronofy’s approach considers scheduling at a more holistic level.
The whole purpose of a scheduling tool is to book meetings. These tools only become valuable at the stage when a user schedules an interview, sets up a support session, or books a sales call.
Up to that point, any fees paid for the tool are just overhead – users are spending money on a tool that isn't delivering value yet. It feels distinctly old-fashioned to pay a license fee for software, just so it's available to use if and when you need it.
With our new payment plan, there’s no charge for an account or a personal booking page – we'll only charge you if someone actually books a time. If more than one person books a time with you in a month, there’s no extra charge; there's just one set monthly fee for using your account.
Our mission
In a world of SaaS subscription services, where monthly recurring revenue is the overarching measure of success, this seems like a crazy step. However, when you look at our mission, it makes sense.
Cronofy’s goal is to schedule everything for everyone.
If you’re paying a monthly subscription for a scheduling tool, you need to be sure that you’re using it every month. This makes sense for a salesperson; a steady stream of meetings is crucial for hitting quota.
But not everyone needs a scheduling tool every day, or even every month. For example, when it comes to recruitment, managers aren’t hiring all of the time.
If you’re a Recruitment Coordinator, buying licenses for hiring managers to book interviews when they’re only hiring for three months of the year, you’re not getting value for your investment. In order to save them time booking and give candidates a great experience, you either have to swallow the fees for the remainder of the year or carefully move licenses around to different users.
This issue is amplified for recruitment agencies, with multiple clients all hiring at different times.
With a value-based pricing model like Cronofy’s, you only pay for the client when you’ve started delivering vetted candidates. Once the role has been filled you don’t need to do anything, you just don’t pay for that client's account, but you still have it ready to go when their next vacancy opens.
It’s not just the recruitment industry that uses scheduling regularly – it's a requirement for many companies, just not a permanent one. For example Project Managers need to liaise with external suppliers, and Engineers need to be pulled into occasional customer support requests. These roles benefit from streamlined and efficient scheduling, even if it's not needed at all times of the year. These are the people we want to provide more value to with the Scheduler.
The future of SaaS
This pay-for-value approach to pricing is not only fair, I believe that it’s also the future for Software as a Service.
Service providers like Cronofy, who have deep understanding of user behavior, should use this knowledge to ensure that as many people can benefit from their services as possible. Inflexible set monthly license fees don't consider the nuances of business operations.
Powering the scheduling of hundreds of applications used by tens of thousands of companies has given us a deep insight into how people get value from scheduling tools. We’ve seen how doctors, therapists, coaches, interviewers, real-estate agents, consultants, support professionals and countless other professions have engaged with scheduling and gained value from it.
We’ve already used this insight to provide active usage-based pricing to some of our high-volume API customers. We've worked closely with them to identify what their customers value and how we can deliver the service in a way that benefits them.
Now, as we use the Scheduler to bring world-class scheduling to even more people, we’ve harnessed this insight to deliver our innovative, forward-looking pricing model that focuses on charging for value not rent.
There is now no financial barrier to anyone signing up for a Cronofy account – it’s ready for you to use when you need it.
Want to learn more about our new Scheduler payment plans? Check out all the details here to find the right one for your business needs.