Richard Terry-Lloyd
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The Cover Charge at the Door

·Richard Terry-Lloyd
PricingGo-To-MarketNetlifyEnterpriseBuilders

We used to charge a cover at the door. Getting rid of it was one of the bigger risks we've taken as a company.

Why we couldn't keep charging per seat

Netlify used to be all about front-end developers.

The market was already pushing us to become something enterprises run their whole business on, and we knew that meant we couldn't keep charging per seat.

So earlier this year, we moved off seats and onto credits.

That was a bet with a real short-term cost. We knew it would hit revenue, especially enterprise revenue, before it paid off anything else.

What it bought us

A thousand people at one company can now start building without anyone signing a PO first.

Nobody has to convince a buyer to take a chance on them before they've even tried it. They just get in the door and find out if they like building.

Some of our enterprise customers haven't been able to take full advantage of this shift yet. That part is still coming.

The tradeoff is real, too

Without guardrails, a consumption model gets confusing fast, and cost predictability becomes the first thing every buyer asks about.

That's what we're still building for.

But charging people at the door to find out if they'd like building was never the right trade for where this company was headed.