All businesses will benefit if enterprise SaaS uses credit-based pricing

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I've been thinking about this for a while.

Most SaaS products charge based on the number of users.

You have 100 employees? Buy 100 seats.

But in reality, all 100 people don't use the software equally. Some use it every day, some use it once a week, and some only log in to check a report.

So why should they all cost the same?

A credit-based model changes the idea a little.

The company buys a pool of credits, and different actions consume different amounts.

For example:

Create → more credits

Update → some credits

View → very little credits

So you're paying more for actual usage rather than simply giving someone access.

I think this can be especially useful for businesses with a large number of employees but relatively few active users.

The interesting part is that this model already works well in areas like cloud and API products. I don't see it used as much across traditional enterprise SaaS.

Maybe the reason is simple: per-seat pricing is much easier to understand and predict.

Zopkit is experimenting with this approach at the organization level.

Not saying it's the perfect model. But I do think it's worth knowing:

Zopkit keeps the credits at the organization level, rather than creating a separate credit bucket for every employee.

Say a company has 100 employees.

They don't need to buy 100 separate usage plans. The organization buys a credit package, and everyone who uses Zopkit draws from that shared pool.

One employee might use a lot of CRM and Finance features. Another might only check reports occasionally.

Their usage can be very different, but the company is working from the same shared credit pool.

When the credits are used up, the organization can top up based on its needs.

This model isn't completely new. Usage and credit models are already common in areas like cloud, APIs and AI.

But applying the same thinking to broader enterprise business software is still interesting.

Should enterprise software pricing be based on how many people have access, or how much the business actually uses it?