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Proptech Founder’s Guide: Publishing Pricing

Your proptech product’s pricing isn’t settled yet and you’re afraid there’s so much sticker shock that you hide it behind a Book a Demo button on your homepage. Here’s why it’s hurting you.

Your Customers Don’t Have Time To Book A Demo

When I’m about to start a real estate development project, cost estimation is one of a dozen parallel paths I have going on. And the estimation itself contains hundreds of line items that need ballpark pricing.

If your proptech company has a competitive product that I can use on my deal, I will go to your website and try to find pricing. Then I click the Pricing option on the menu and instead either find a “Contact Us” form or a “Book a Demo” button.

There’s no way I’m going to finish the cost estimation the same day if I have to book a demo with a handful of vendors to get accurate pricing. It’s like sitting through mini timeshare sales presentations but with no cheap vacation at the end.

Google is Hurting You

Within seconds of seeing the book a demo button, I’m typing “[your company name] price” in the search bar. And part of me hopes that some of your customers shared pricing details and reviews on Reddit.

If the pricing is out there, that is my only reference point, and I will assume that’s the ballpark.

The problem is, you’re not controlling your pricing narrative anymore. Which was the point of the Book a Demo button in the first place.

And even more dangerous, if the only available pricing info online is published by a customer in the high end of your range, you may be losing a ton of customers you didn’t even know were really interested.

Bad reasons to Hide Pricing

There’s lots of reasons founders choose to hide pricing, but if one or more of your reasons are on this list, you need to rethink your strategy:

  • Your pricing is too confusing for customers
  • Your pricing is high and the sticker shock will scare away customers
  • Your pricing is too low and you’re having trouble conveying its true value
  • Your competitors play dirty and will use it to undercut you
  • As long as your sales team can just pitch the product to demonstrate it’s true value, the customers will understand and the price won’t matter

These reasons are indication that you haven’t properly communicated who the product is for and why your product creates value at your price points.

3 Valid Reasons to Hide Pricing

I’m not saying you should absolutely disclose pricing in every case. In the following cases, the Book a Demo button may be your best option.

1. Your Company is Early Stage

If your proptech product is very early stage and you’re still working out product market fit and pricing model, you’ll need to experiment and work with clients to identify the best pricing structure.

Most of your customers at this point will probably be acquired via word of mouth, so anyone who comes through your website will be a bonus. You should have a much higher level of engagement with these customers. Discussions with them should be a two way street.

You can experiment with different models for different customer types. It’s critically important to ask your early customers for feedback. If they’re willing to work with an early stage startup (which is very rare for proptech), they’re likely willing to help you figure out a pricing structure that makes sense for real estate developers and landlords just like them.

2. Your customer expects an initial conversation

If your customer base is exclusively enterprise customers, it’s expected that large product deployments need to be drawn up in a contract over a number of discussions.

In this case, advertising a set price would be unusual, and even counterproductive. You could, however, outline pricing guidelines for different categories to at least help your clients ballpark pricing. It will improve the percentage of qualified customers reaching out to you.

3. Your Product Requires Complex Customization

If your product is highly complex and requires understanding the customer’s needs on a case by case basis, then it may be appropriate to hide pricing. But first ask yourself if there truly are no logical pricing tiers or patterns in your product deployments that justify keeping your pricing in a black box. The more you’re able to disclose, the longer potential clients will stay on your website and consider initiating contact.

Automate your top of funnel demos with eWebinar!

If you can’t avoid the book a demo button, you can save time and money by automating your top-of-funnel demo process with eWebinar: (This is an affiliate link so if you sign up, I get a small referral fee. Appreciate it!). Too many proptech companies don’t explain who their target customer is before prompting to book a demo, so this will save you a lot of time to find more qualified leads before you get your sales team involved!

Alternatives to “Book a Demo” buttons

There’re a lot of options between full pricing transparency and a Book a Demo button. Depending on your product type here are some alternatives.

1. Product Category Details

Help your customer qualify themselves. If you only service enterprise customers and a SMB customer is wondering what your pricing is, you’re wasting the customer’s time and your sales team’s time.

Put up 2-4 broad customer segments and describe your product’s capabilities for each.

2. Describe the Pricing Model

Give a guideline on how you come up with pricing based on specific metrics. For example, one common contech pricing model is based on total SF of annual construction.

Framing the initial conversation before it takes place removes uncertainties and helps customers further qualify themselves.

3. Tiered Pricing

Taking things one step further, you can segment your customers and product categories into tiers and give “starting at..” price points. This level of transparency will increase the quality of leads coming in but leaves flexibility for customization.

You could even do a hybrid of giving more concrete pricing for simpler, lower tier customer categories, and asking enterprise customers to contact you for customized quotes.

4. Customizable pricing

If your product is fairly complex, build a pricing calculator for customers to play around with. This encroaches the realm of ecommerce and people who are spending a lot of time on a tool like this have a very high chance of converting into paying customers.

Are you struggling with PMF?

No matter how transparent you are with pricing, if you haven’t found product market fit (PMF), the customers won’t be appearing on your website in the first place. If you’re a proptech founder, check out more of my proptech founder’s guides and reach out to me for consultation.