All deals › Glossary

B2B software pricing glossary

15 terms · plain-English definitions

• Annual vs monthly billing

  The choice between paying month-to-month or prepaying a year, usually for a discount. Annual billing trades commitment for a lower effective rate.

• API access and integrations

  An API lets software talk to your other tools programmatically; integrations are pre-built connections. Both determine whether the tool fits the stack you already run.

• Contract term and auto-renewal

  The length of your commitment and what happens when it ends — many B2B contracts auto-renew for another full term unless you cancel inside a notice window.

• Data migration

  Moving your existing data — customers, transactions, history — into the new tool. The most underestimated cost in any software switch.

• Free trial

  A time-limited period of full or nearly-full access before you pay. The honest way to evaluate software — if you use it properly.

• Freemium

  A free tier that is genuinely useful, with paid upgrades for power features. The vendor bets you will grow into paying.

• Multi-currency billing

  Whether the vendor bills and operates in your currency — and what happens when it does not. List-price currency and billing currency are different questions.

• Onboarding fee

  A one-time charge for setup, data migration, or training when you start. Sometimes waived, sometimes mandatory, sometimes disguised as implementation.

• Per-transaction fee

  A fee charged on each sale or payment processed — typically a small percentage plus a fixed amount. The core of payment-processor pricing.

• Price lock and grandfathering

  Grandfathering means existing customers keep their old price when rates rise; a price lock is a contractual guarantee the price will not change for a set period.

• SaaS

  Software you rent by subscription and use in a browser instead of buying once and installing. You pay for access, and the vendor handles hosting, updates, and security.

• Seat-based pricing

  A pricing model where you pay per user login, sometimes called per-seat or per-user pricing. Adding a team member raises the bill; removing one lowers it.

• Service-level agreement

  A service-level agreement (SLA) is the vendor's contractual promise about uptime and support response times, plus what you receive if they miss. Standard in infrastructure and payments, rarer in small-business tools.

• Tiered pricing

  Plans stacked in levels — Starter, Pro, Enterprise — where each tier unlocks more features, higher limits, or better support. Most B2B software is sold this way.

• Usage-based pricing

  Pricing tied to how much you use — transactions processed, emails sent, API calls made — rather than a flat fee. The bill scales with your activity.