What per-seat pricing does to behaviour
A per-seat price puts a turnstile on the door. Every invite becomes a small purchase decision, so people share logins, leave contractors out of the tools they need, and keep the freelancer on email because adding them costs four subscriptions.
For an agency running ten contractors across four tools, adding one person can mean four separate charges. The tools get a little more revenue; the work gets a lot worse.
The arithmetic we are up against
A typical stack — time tracking, chat, boards, docs — runs somewhere around thirty dollars per person per month. At twelve people that is a few hundred dollars, and it scales with exactly the thing you want to be free to change.
NUVI is thirty dollars for the workspace. At two people it is roughly a wash. At twelve it is not close. At forty it looks like a mistake on our side, which is the part we get asked about.
- One price per workspace, not per person
- Contractors and invited guests are never charged
- A client workspace is paid for by the client, not the contractor
Why it still works as a business
Because the workspace count grows, not the seat count. A contractor invited into four client workspaces is four paying workspaces, and they paid nothing to be there. The free tier for one person is not charity; it is how the contractor arrives before the agency does.
It also caps our support burden honestly. We are not selling seat expansion, so nobody is being upsold by someone whose job depends on it.
What we will not do later
Introduce per-seat tiers once there are enough customers to make it profitable. If the price changes it will be the one price changing, with thirty days’ notice and the option to leave before it applies. Pricing that punishes the customer for growing is the thing we are trying to replace.