ClickTale Support Forums

Hi Everyone,

We are figuring out the right combination of features and pricing of the ClickTale service plans and we would like to hear your thoughts on the matter. Please keep all this information confidential, as it is likely to evolve.
We are considering offering four standard plans. Let us know which one best fits you.

1. A Free Plan
Cost: $0
Recorded page visits: 20 / week (~80 / month)
Domains you can track at once: 2
Recording Storage Period: 7 days (~20 recording)
No SSL

2. Personal Plan
Cost: $19 / Month
Recorded page visits: 25 / day (~750 / month)
Domains you can track at once: 4
Recording Storage Period: 90 days (~2,250 recordings)
SSL View Only

3. Standard Plan
Cost: $49 / Month
Recorded page visits: 100 /day (~3,000 / month)
Domains you can track at once: 8
Recording Storage Period: 180 days (~18,000 recordings)
SSL View Only

4. Professional Plan
Cost: $99 / Month
Recorded page visits: 300 /day (~9,000 / month)
Domains you can track at once: 16
Recording Storage Period: 360 days (~108,000 recordings)
SSL View & Record

In addition, we are considering offering one-time Recording Boosts that involve no commitment. They cost:
$9 for 100 recordings, and
$29 for 500 recordings

We want to make sure that these plans are both attractive to our users and enable us to cover our expenses and eventually become profitable. So please let us know your thoughts.

If I were you, I think that I would increase the free plans amount of recordings by just a few. Also, I would change the professional plan so that you could choose how many recordings you get... So like it is x number of dollars per recording until you have over 100 recordings you purchase...

Let me simplify...

you can buy specific amounts of recordings per month, to be divided up equally among the days. For pricing go with something like this... for 0-100 recordings a month it costs x number of dollars per 10 recordings... (of course, the person can choose how many recordings they get for each month)... Then you have 101 recordings to 200 recordings which cost a little less per 10 recordings than the first tier.

If this confuses you, I will try to explain it a little bit more... Just let me know!

First, a question:

Does one page view == one recording?

If so, I don't see a plan in that proposal that quite hits the sweet spot for my business. The $49/month plan is a little pricey, and the $19/month plan has an essentially uselessly low cap on it. My site has 10 pageviews/visit, so I could record two visitors a day on that plan. The $49/month plan lets me grab 10 people a day, which seems like a reasonable number, but that cost is too high -- it's more than double what I'd be comfortable paying.

The "recording boost" options also seem way over-priced relative to the price of the plans. I guess it's kind of like phone companies do overage pricing though, so maybe that's just how it works.

-Jake

This complicates billing for us and might be too complicated for the users to understand and calculate. The notion of 3-6 predefined plans is quite standard in the industry.

Yes. Why? It is simple. Pageviews is a standard metric in the web. A user with more pageviews takes linearly more processing and storage resources.



What if there would be a significant discount if you are willing to commit to 12/6/3 months?

Arik.

Ok...Tal and Arik

Here are my thoughts on this.

1. The only people I can foresee even using this product in the first place are folks who are/intend to make money from a site. Period. Mentioned this in a previous post, but after watching about 3 videos, there are much more entertaining things to do than watch someone's behavior on a web site UNLESS you are interested in making changes that result in increased revenue for your site/company.

That said, let's compare some simple software solutions and their average cost.

> Online Chat - Usually around $50-199 per month, depending on features.
> Cart Solutions - From $99 - $1000 per month average
> Payment Gateway - $49 - ???? per month, depending on volume.

Ok, so my point is fairly clear. You audience is probably already conditioned to pay at least $49 a month for services for their business.

I personally would throw down at least $99 a month (no contracts though!) to have SSL capabilities and be able to see a decent segment of visitors.

I actually received a quote to upgrade to a service today (company product is very similar to ClickTale with a few more Enterprise features...) We have been in negotiations with this company. The initial cost to setup the software and buy the licenses was $250,000 (yes, that is a comma and not a typo!) We talked them out of many of the features and the quote I got today was for a total of $38,500.

And that company is getting more customers than they can shake a stick at. He was closing at least six contracts last Friday alone! (And many of those contracts were in excess of $1,000,000!)

So $99 is really low priced. If someone cannot take the $99 or even the $49 ClickTale product, and use the information to at least create a positive ROI every month, they probably do not need the product in the first place.

Truth is, having a lower priced product is probably going to be a nightmare in the Customer Service area. You are going to get someone who is paying $19 a month and practically wants you to sit down and watch all of the recordings and analyze them too! By pricing the service responsibly, you will weed out those types of clients.



2. That said, I think your pricing structure could have a bit more flexibility and become more attractive to the end user and yourselves. First, since this is a hosted solution, why not offer a "storage based plan". In other words, offer users a certain amount of storage space and let them decide what to do with it. Then allow the customer to "dump" the recordings they don't need anymore. Here is the immediate problem we are seeing. One user that ClickTale records may actually view 30 pages in a 10 minute session. That is almost 12% of the current daily allowance. Why not calculate the total space needed to store that data. This makes your cost equation work as well. The way you are currently calculating recordings does not level the playing field. Say for instance, someone wanted to ClickTale their MySpace page (not sure if that would even be possible...merely and illustration) and let's say that the average visitor to this page spends an average time of 15 minutes on that page. The other site is an Adsense page and the average time spent on the page is 9 seconds. Under the current system, each visit is a recording, regardless of the other variables calculated. So wouldn't it be better to let the Adsense site have X amount of data and let the MySpace site have X amount of data...and let the number of recordings be "mute". Data storage is Data storage and server load is server load.

3. Not sure if this is currently a feature, but either way, it would be a huge determining factor. Have a way to "trigger a recording". I can tell you right now, that we would put a "trigger" in place to only begin a recording once a visitor has added something to their cart...or visited a certain page...or visited >10 pages, etc... This puts the user in much more control of the recordings he does collect. I would be much more inclined to go for the Pro subscription rate if that kind of control was given. Then we would be able to use the recordings in such a specific way that it would warrant a higher price.

4. Ever thought about an Enterprise, self hosted solution? While a large segment of your audience would not be interested, many would. You would not have to give complete control of the software to the end user, and possible could just create a "ClickTale Viewer" and require them to give ftp access to a server of their choosing to upload the data that the "ClickTale Viewer" could read from. With this, you would not have the storage and bandwidth costs that you are currently incurring and many folks would pay an increased fee for this service.

5. Are you considering "rollover recordings"? Many business owners are not going to devote time each day to sit down and watch these recordings. In fact, many will turn this feature off and on and only use it during periods specific to testing schedules. That said, why not offer "rollover recordings" and let them use the recordings at the time of their choosing. If I am paying $99 a month, I should get X amount of recordings. If I only record 15 recordings, why not roll over the unused recordings to the next month?

6. I can see how the "Recording Boost" feature could be helpful...but let's do the math. I think the average person will see this as nothing more than an attempt to force them into a higher subscription rate.

Ok....I am on the $19 a month plan, used up all of my recordings. The difference between the Personal Plan and the Professional Plan is $80. BUT, to "Boost" my account to the same level of recordings as a Pro account, would cost me $479...hmm...seems pretty steep to me. Plus, I do not get the features of those service plans. I can tell you right now, I would just create multiple accounts with ClickTale before I would invest in buying "Boost" recordings. With our site averaging about 11 page views per visitor, the $9 "Boost Pack" translates into more than $1 per visitor...really high considering no immediate ROI. (Not ad spend...etc...) The larger Boost Pack would bring the cost per visitor down to $.64...not too bad, but again, we would be much smarter to just open a second ClickTale account for another domain and let all of the recordings go to a single domain.

7. Can you explain the difference between SSL View Only and SSL View and Record???

I don't have a problem with it, I was just making sure I understood correctly. It makes sense!




Yeah, I think that's reasonable.

In my mind you are competing against crazyegg and google analytics. Google analytics is free and crazyegg plans offer significantly more visitors to me at the same price breakdown. One of the things they both excel at is offering aggregate level reports, which offers a significantly more statistically robust way to analyze visitor behavior.

I am not particularly comfortable making judgements about how my users use my site based on watching only a handful of visits. Let's say I think I need 50 visits (I believe it is actually many times higher than this) to evaluate some aspect of my site. That would take me 3+ weeks to collect on the personal plan. On the pro plan I could see it on under a week, so obviously that's the sweet spot for me.

Unfortunately if I am making a decision between google analytics (100% visitor coverage, free), crazyegg (100% visitor coverage at my volume, $19/month) and clicktale standard plan (5% visitor coverage, $49/month), I would have to eliminate clicktale. Now if I could choose between crazyegg and clicktale at $19/month for a useful plan (and assuming I get my heatmaps!), I would jump all over clicktale.

As to Adam's comments about pricing, I think he and I are not operating in the same world. I pay $80/year for a merchant gateway, developed my cart in-house (though plenty of people use free open source or ISP-supported solutions), use Analytics for free, and am paying $19/month for crazyegg. I don't use enterprise-price-level solutions and I think probably a lot of your customers don't either. I also don't require much support. If you are going to be in the enterprise world, just hire a ton of people for sales & support and quadruple your prices. Otherwise, I hope you will find a plan that is useful and price-competitive.

I also think your current pricing structure -- 4 plans at clear levels -- is a much better idea than anything more complicated, but it sounds like you guys already agree.

Anyway, I hope my thoughts are clear. Basically, the $19/month plan doesn't offer enough data to tell me anything statistically significant, and the $49 plan might but offers 1/20th the visitor coverage of analytics or crazyegg at $30-$49 more per month. I am concerned about improving my ROI, but I need a cheaper plan to do it with ClickTale.

Anyway, I love the service and its potential and hope it ends up being affordable for businesses like mine.

Jake

Now for my 2 cents.

I think the pricing should be more based on the number of recordings and not a period of time. Don't make it like a cell phone company's horrible pricing plans.

"I didn't use all my minutes this month but I still got charged the full price?"

"I used up all my minutes after only 10 days!?"

The problem with the cellphone company plans is that they are not gradual enough. Here's a typical situation:

Base Plan: 100 min/month, $20

Cheap, but only good for grandma to call the grandkids once a month and not much else.

Standard Plan: 500 min/month, $50

Good amount of time for the average person in one month but the monthly charge is also a bit high for the average person's income.

Premium Plan: 5,000 min/month, $200

Way more minutes than anyone needs and way too expensive.


So what can I do if I use 700 minutes a month? I either force myself to talk less, pay through the roof in overage charges each month, or waste 300 minutes a month by going with the Premium plan.

The phone companies should just let me talk as much as I want and bill me for whatever I used at the end of the month. Sometimes my bill will be lower, sometimes my bill will be higher. But I certainly WON'T be angry at the company for charging me a fair price.


Ok so that turned out to be more of a rant against the phone companies that I expected but I think my point still comes across.

A. Basic Plan: A set amount of recordings. There is no time limit. The factors that determine how long the recordings will last are (1) # of visitors per day to website, (2) % of visitors that are recorded per day. In this case the customer knows exactly how much they are investing.

B. Maximum Daily Plan: Each day a certain number of visitors are recorded based on % of visitors to website. Number of recordings per day will not go over xxx. They are billed at the end of the month for the actual number of recordings. In this case the customer knows the maximum amount they should expect to be charged.

C. Open Plan: Each day a certain % of website visitors are recorded with no fixed cap. In this case the customer is not concerned with the monthly cost.

Wow. I have a lot of stuff to write. Some very interesting opinions were expressed.


Agree. What you are saying here fits my model of small to medium ecommerce sites. They are comfortable paying around $50/mo and have a clear financial goal.

Now you are entering into the enterprise market. We are not ready to do that because our aggregation/reporting capabilities are still weak, we are not willing to spend $$$ on enterprise sales and provide the level of support that is expected.

Adam, I have enabled our new heatmap report on your account. Take a look.

I am not sure if this arrangement will be easier to explain to the customers. Suddenly they will start asking, why a recording is such and such kb or why it takes such and such bytes to record a user. It is probably the fairest method, but there are many factors that make up the cost and it becomes a nightmare.

What do you think about billing for "ActiveTime"? So instead of getting 100 recordings you will get 100 minutes of recordings.

Yes this can be done today with some modification of the default code that we generate. However you will not be able to see what the user had done before reaching the cart. Does it matter to you?
I would recommend "tagging" the user when he reaches the cart so you can easily see which users have been there in the interface.

Yes. Too early at this stage.

The problem I have with "rollovers" and "boosts" is that we don't want users to accumulate a ridiculous amount of recording credit and then send a huge spike of data to processing. Having upper limits allows us to do better planning and balancing which results in better quality of service.
As a result we don't offer "rollovers" and boosts cost more than regular recordings.
Boosts are also meant to function as very low level introductory packages, for users who are still not ready to commit to a subscription.

With SSL view you can login to the members area with SSL and watch your data securely.
With SSL record you can also record SSL pages.
Since you asked, I would assume this is not clear, right?



What you are basically saying is that you have a fixed budget for your web-analytics needs, and that in your case we are competing against other services. Unfortunately I have no good answer for you at this time because feature-wise we don't see ourselves comparable with the other services.
My assumption is that we collect and store ten times more data than CrazyEgg or Google analytics, so we can't offer the same number of visitors for the same price.

I agree with you on this one. Adam was talking about an enterprise level solution. This is not the case here (yet?!).

What do you think about billing for "ActiveTime" instead of for recordings?



I don't like the idea of presenting the user with a bill after the service was used. Unlike with phone usage, traffic is often unexpected and some people just throw the script in without really considering how much data it will record. Suddenly a guy has a huge bill and a good relationship is broken.

In your case it would be probably best to get the "Standard Plan" and add 200 min of "boost" to it.



Summary & ideas:
Is "ActiveTime" a better metric than Pageviews for billing?
Should price of "boosts" be depended on your current plan? So that somebody with a Standard plan could boost for less than somebody with a Personal plan.
Is anybody interested to have an unlimited account and be billed for use with no fixed cap?

Thanks for the feedback so far,
Arik

Arik...

If you are willing to give a trade of 1 minute of recording for 1 pageview currently...Heck...that is a good deal!

I haven't done a detailed analysis...but I would guess that our average pageview duration is somewhere around 10 seconds.

So that would mean a 6 fold increase in data for us. AND...are you truly saying "Active Time"...meaning if someone lands on a page...then goes and picks their child up at daycare...then comes back...ACTIVE time would only be when they moved their mouse...not the dead spot in between...

That would be even better!

Even though the total duration may be 10 seconds, there may only be 5 seconds of "Active Time"...so that would be a 20 fold increase in data!

This is sounding very good!

The only billing option that could happen in is #3. And in that case the customer is willing to pay whatever you bill because they have a lot of money to throw at the service. (A large corporation with a large usability budget.)

In both cases 1 and 2 the customer never pays more than they are expecting.

Personally, I think that if you are paying for a plan you should be given all of the features. By only including SSL Recording at the highest level plan, you are cutting out everyone below that. Some personal websites and small businesses may not be willing to pay for the top level plans which makes CT less valuable to them. The difference in the plans should be the amounts you can record, not the features available.

An idea about a billing structure:
姫erhaps you could use a per user session structure
-1 Session could be limited to 10 page view, then if your user used more, you would be charged 2 sessions

ActiveTime is a metric that we already use extensively in the site. You can compare pageviews and ActiveTime for your existing users and see how it matches.
This metric is different from the Length metric as it excludes time period with no interaction. So if a user goes to have a coffee, or browse some other site, then it doesn't account as ActiveTime.
The average ActiveTime per pageview is currently about 40 seconds. I have checked and your site has a substantially lower average ActiveTime per pageview than the average. Consequently you will benefit from this change, or at least get a fair treatment (depending on how you choose to look at it). On the other hand, sites with long articles will get less pageviews that they would otherwise get (assuming people will read their articles).

What I am really interested to hear from you is how you think this new pricing model will affect the way customers see the offer. Several people mentioned that 40 pageviews is too little, what if the product was 40 minutes of ActiveTime. Does this sound like a lot more? Does it sound too much?
Do 5 hours of recordings per day sounds like a lot? I think that we will need to stress the importance of aggregation and search or else people will rightfully say that they have no time/will to watch so many recordings. What do you think?

Arik

What would you change? Add SSL to the Standard plan? The Personal plan or the Free plan?



We have considered this idea. But we think it is less fair because users stay in different sites for different amount of time. Besides, it is more difficult technically.

Arik.

Just my two cents....which won't buy a Starbuck's coffee on most days...



YES!!! YES!!! YES!!!

I guess this will just have to play out. My initial thoughts are that people are going to love the service but for your business owners, only having this feature on the pro service may cause them to reconsider.

Then again, maybe not. I am not sure if you mentioned yet whether or not this is a "contract free" service? If so, some may just go with the pro for a couple of months just to do SSL testing then step down to the standard or personal plan for general site observation.

Time will tell.