Pricing Changes

June 8, 2018

Along with new pricing, we've also announced volume discounts.

In one month, on July 10th, we'll be making our first pricing changes since we launched ServerPilot five years ago. The majority of our paying users will save money if they choose to switch to one of the new plans. Here are the main points:

  • You will be able to select a different plan for each server. Currently, you choose a plan for your account and all servers are on that plan.
  • All existing servers can keep their current features and pricing. Of course, you can choose to switch your servers to one of the new plans.
  • The new pricing will be based on both servers and apps. Currently, pricing is only based on the number of servers.
  • We're removing the Free plan. However, existing Free plan servers will remain free unless you choose to switch them to one of the new plans.

If you want to keep the current features and pricing for your existing servers, there's nothing you'll need to do.

If you want to switch only some servers to the new plans (that is, only the servers you'd save money on by switching), you can do that, too. 78% of our users will lower their total costs by switching some or all of their servers to the equivalent new plans.

New Plans and Pricing

Instead of two paid plans (Coach and Business), there will be three paid plans (Economy, Business, and First Class).

Economy: $5/server + $0.50/app

The new Economy plan will have all of the features of the existing Coach plan except for the server stats (CPU, memory, bandwidth, and disk usage).

If you're on the current Coach plan and average less than ten apps per server (which is more than 70% of our Coach plan users), you'll save money by switching all of your servers to the new Economy plan.

Business: $10/server + $1/app

The new Business plan will include all Economy plan features plus server and app resource usage stats, log file viewing, and priority support. Instead of also including Application Performance Management (APM) tools like the current Business plan does, our new Business plan instead focuses its additional features on server and app health data.

If you're on the current Business plan, average less than 39 apps per server, and don't use the APM features, you'll save money by switching to the new Business plan.

First Class: $20/server + $2/app

The new First Class plan will include all of the features of our current Business plan, which means it also includes APM features with app performance and request data, slow script alerts, and high priority support.

If you're currently on the Business plan and average less than fifteen apps per server (which is more than 65% of our Business plan users), you'll pay less for the same features by switching all of your servers to the new First Class plan.

Why We're Changing Pricing

When we started building ServerPilot over five years ago, we wanted to keep our pricing as simple as possible. We decided to charge based only on the number of servers, not based on the number of apps or server specs such as RAM. That meant we had simple pricing, but some users got a lot more benefit than others.

And benefit they do. We have users with a thousand apps per server! Which is awesome. But what's not awesome is that the power law distribution of apps per server means the majority of our users, the ones who don't have large numbers of apps per server, essentially subsidize our other users.

Removing our Free plan is part of our same effort to charge appropriately for the value our users get from ServerPilot. We've heard from users who struggle with upgrading to our Coach plan because, even though they want to support us, it's irrational when they get all of the features they need on the Free plan—hey, we completely get it, it doesn't make sense to "donate" to companies. Other Free plan users work around missing features by customizing their servers which causes a large amount of support for us when incorrect customizations break their servers. Even though we prioritize support for our paid users, we're not going to leave any support question unanswered. More support means higher expenses means higher prices for paid plans.

So, we decided to change our pricing. As a result, most of our paying users will pay substantially less by switching to our new plans. The most common use case—hosting a single app on each server—will cost $5.50 rather than $10. That's 45% less than before. However, some users will pay more under our new pricing model. And, of course, users on our existing Free plan will no longer have a free option for new servers they add.

If you're one of our users who would pay more under our new pricing, there's no need to upgrade your existing servers to the new plans. You can keep your current prices with unlimited apps on those servers. If our new pricing won't work with your business model going forward, please contact our sales team if we haven't reached out to you already.

Thank you to all of our users who've supported us through the first part of our journey. Our team is growing, we're moving faster each day, and we've got amazing stuff in development. The next year is going to be a big one.