At Flood, we’re all about making load testing easy enough for anyone to do, and we think we’ve done a pretty good job of that. However, judging from the conversations we’ve had with flooders, there’s one thing that can cause confusion and slow down the process: pricing.
So we’re changing that! We’ve been working on some changes to our pricing model that we think will make new and existing Flooders happy. We’ll unveil the full details on January 9th, 2020, at which point the changes will take effect. But here’s an overview of what you can expect.
No subscriptions
Nobody wants to forget to cancel a subscription— not even us! We’re getting rid of subscriptions entirely and moving to a “pay what you use” postpaid model where you’ll get a bill every month for your actual usage. There will be no recurring subscriptions and no minimum commitment— just drop in and drop out of Flood as your needs change.
You won’t need to try to estimate your usage or decide beforehand on the plan you think you’ll need. We’ll bill you for your usage at the end of your monthly billing period. You’ll also see an estimate before you launch every test and an ongoing cost counter so you can control your spending.
Simpler pricing
In the new model, we will charge you by the Virtual User Hour (VUH) instead of by the node hour. If you’ve been around the load testing industry for a while, you may already know what a VUH is. If not, here’s a formula for calculating a VUH:
VUH = (# of users) x (duration of the flood in hours)
For example:
1,000 users for 5 hours = 5,000 VUH
10,000 users for 1 hour = 10,000 VU
At the end of the month, we charge you for the total VUH that you used. That’s it!
Free tier
Yup, we’re moving from our current trial system to a perpetual free tier. All flooders will be able to use their first 1,000 VUH for free every month. This tier will also be suitable for non-profits and companies with fewer testing requirements.
Discounts for higher usage
Once you use more than 1,000 VUH in one month, you’ll begin to pay for VUH at a base price of 4.5¢ – that’s US$0.045. You’ll then unlock discounts to that price as you use more VUH in a single month. You’ll be able to check how much you owe us at any time from your Flood dashboard.
Discounts for longer commitments
We’ll continue to offer significant discounts (up to 72%) to flooders who run tests on their own infrastructure instead of ours and who are willing to prepay for their usage for 1 or 3 years.
Access to Enterprise features
We have a few features that have previously only been available for Enterprise accounts, such as running tests on your own AWS and Azure accounts and integrating with APM tools. The new pricing scheme will bring all of these features to everyone on Flood, along with a few new ones we’ve got up our sleeve. Stay tuned!
We’re grateful to have so many engaged users who have taken the time to tell us what wasn’t working with the previous pricing system. We think we’ve found an excellent way to incorporate all that feedback while still keeping Flood’s pricing competitive. We’re hoping that these changes address everything you didn’t like, and then some. 😊
We’ll release more details in January when the changes are live. In the meantime, let us know what you think!