Before smartphones and text were a thing, there were pagers – a cute little box that sent alphanumeric message alerts. While pagers are (for the most part) an outdated artifact, PagerDuty has added panache and modernization to the concept. It provides a SaaS incident response platform for IT departments that has attracted customers like SAP, Zoom, Yelp and others. As its popularity has grown, PagerDuty pricing has taken some twists and turns.
PagerDuty changed their product set early in 2019. Historically, it offered Lite, Basic, Standard and Enterprise classes of service. These tiers changed again in mid-2020 to Starter, Platform Team, Platform Business and Enterprise. And the latest iteration is Free, Professional, Business and Digital Operations.
That’s a lot of changes. It’s no wonder many PagerDuty customers – especially those approaching a renewal – are wondering what they’re paying for and if it’s a fair price.
PagerDuty Pricing Changes – The Highlights
Here are a few highlights on how PagerDuty pricing tiers have changed and how they correspond to the vendor’s current tiers:
- PagerDuty has introduced a new, Free tier
- The Enterprise tier is now called Digital Operations. NPI’s experience suggests pricing for Digital Operations to be the same as it was for Enterprise ($99 per user/month)
- Pricing for Business is the same as it was for Platform Business ($39 per user/month)
- Pricing for Professional (on par with the old Platform Team tier) is actually lower – from $29 to $19 per user/month
More info is in the screen captures below.
Old Pricing Tiers:
Current Pricing Tiers (found here):
Other Considerations When Negotiating PagerDuty Pricing
If you’re renewing or negotiating with PagerDuty, pay attention to support. As PagerDuty has moved to a SaaS solution, there is inconsistency in how the support costs are handled.
Changes to the vendor’s sales leadership are also something to take note of. The most recent information coming out of PagerDuty is that the sales team is being built out with ex-Salesforce folks. The CRO and head of sales both come from Salesforce and that’s resulted in a lot of new sales team members with a Salesforce pedigree.
Not surprisingly, we are starting to see sales and negotiation behaviors that look and feel a lot like Salesforce. Where PagerDuty pricing was once rigid and largely unchanging, we have seen PagerDuty sharpen the pencil and offer more aggressive pricing, especially on larger deals. There is intense pressure to grow business and sales reps risk losing accounts if they do not grow annual revenue.
NPI continues to analyze many PagerDuty purchases and renewals for our clients. Many have been using PagerDuty for a while and some of the older pricing has been grandfathered in. If you’re one of them, we suggest taking a fresh look at pricing and going back to the negotiation table to make sure your pricing matches the vendor’s new, aggressive style.
Wondering if you’re getting the best possible price for your PagerDuty purchase or renewal? Let us know – NPI can help.
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