Why can't I just see the price of software without a sales call?
Software vendors hide standard pricing behind mandatory sales demos and custom quotes, leaving buyers blind to wide cost variations for identical services. This lack of transparency forces IT professionals to waste time on calls just to learn baseline costs they cannot reasonably predict or compare.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1attending sales demo calls to find out custom pricing quotesDid this help you?
- 2Comparing multiple vendors across different price tiersDid this help you?
- 3Relying on initial discovery calls to filter out servicesDid this help you?
- 4Contacting sales directly and trying to decipher complex release notes or tier structuresDid this help you?
- 5Doing independent research beforehandDid this help you?
- 6Walking away from vendors who withhold pricingDid this help you?
- 7Using demos strictly to confirm specific feature lists or configure trial accountsDid this help you?
- 8Checking external feature comparison maps and matricesDid this help you?
- 9Consulting with distributors or upgrading directly through partner channelsDid this help you?
- 10Talking to an account executive to negotiateDid this help you?
- 11Limiting contracts to a one-year duration instead of multi-year commitmentsDid this help you?
- 12asking in a specific industry subDid this help you?
- 13finding a small consultant who’s already priced a bunch of theseDid this help you?
- 14Sitting through sales calls and committing a portfolio to get pricing informationDid this help you?
- 15Switching to or considering vendors that roll costs into resident billing feesDid this help you?
- 16Build a custom partner portal natively inside existing tools (like HubSpot using Custom Objects and CMS pages).Did this help you?
- 17Schedule sales demo calls to get customized or fluctuating price quotes.Did this help you?
- 18Ask online communities or peers for recent price quotes and ballpark estimates.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“What's the difference (if there is any) between these 2 licenses?”source ↗
“It didn't feel communicated well at all from our disti.”source ↗
“is it easy to upgrade the license or do you have to cancel and rebuy”source ↗
“I'm trying to get a sense of their pricing, since they don't publicly list prices for their paid plans.”source ↗
“Haven't used it but I sat through a demo last quarter and the rep was real cagey about numbers.”source ↗
“500/month is not bad tbh, I was quoted x6 for the same number of partners...”source ↗
“Small RIA, four advisors, and we are quoted anywhere from four to fifteen thousand a month for the same described service. i cannot work out what the spread is buying.”source ↗
“Having a nightmare with salesmen ATM hounding me for 45 mins calls just to get a rough idea of costs.”source ↗
“It’s always like pulling teeth just to get a number out of these guys. half the time the setup fee alone is some mystery number they won’t say unless you book a second call and sit through a full demo first.”source ↗
“if you're pushing some monitoring tool, just put the actual price in the comment and save me from another demo call that ends with "we'll send a custom quote"”source ↗
“I looked at Autel MaxiAP AP200 but it requires to buy subscription for every car brand.”source ↗
“It has been very difficult getting pricing comps for this without having to do a bunch of sales calls and promise to commit the whole portfolio.”source ↗
“might be worth sitting through a couple of those painful sales calls just to get real numbers to wave at your current vendor”source ↗
“Nobody from either company would give a straight answer on minimums or total cost, just "contact sales" which is never a good sign”source ↗
“2 decades dealing with salesforce and it really has gotten worse when renewing”source ↗
“I'm looking for below license cost, what is the better way to get economy quote for these licenses for 3 years duration Per User from any third party vendors?”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 62How to handle unexpected software subscription price hikes and slow support
- 3How to market paid software without a free version
- 9Per endpoint software pricing is too expensive
- 8How to deal with enterprise vendors missing SLAs
- 5How to follow up with a client who picked a cheaper vendor
- 69Why are contractor and window replacement quotes so absurdly high?