Thoughts on pricing

Nearly unlimited.

That’s the value of being able to draw a straight line between every marketing activity and actual revenue. Nearly unlimited. But it is limited.

It’s limited by exactly one thing: a company’s marketing budget. The absolute value of a return on any investment is always constrained by the size of the investment.

We want to offer Tulu to everyone, at every company, no matter the size of their budget. Part of the problem we’re trying to solve is accessibility, of which cost is a huge piece—it doesn’t matter how great a tool is if you can’t afford it.

And it doubly sucks when the parts you really need are locked behind a “Pro” tier for absolutely no reason, bundled with a bunch of other irrelevant features you couldn’t care less about.

Don’t get me started on “credits”. If I wanted an opaque mystery box to sink money into with no clear understanding of the relationship between cost and return, I’d buy loot crates in Fortnite.

So: we’re not doing any of that.

Every plan gets every feature. Every company gets as many seats as they need. Everyone knows exactly what they’re paying, and what they’re getting for it.

But. Not every company is the same (citation needed).

Smaller companies shouldn’t have to pay the same bill as larger ones when they can’t possibly get the same amount of literal, financial value out of the deal—and this is, in the end, all about bottom line value.

In order to meet everyone where their needs (and means) actually are, we had to choose a metric by which to measure.

Team size? The size of a team doesn’t necessarily map to what they’re putting into marketing, and therefore to what Tulu can do for them.

Number of interactions with Tulu’s native AI? Puh-lease. Charging per question disincentivizes asking questions, which is like giving someone an electric shock every time they try to get help with their homework. (And it completely misplaces the value anyway. )

In the end, the only metric that made sense was the one governing a company’s own possible return on investment: the investment itself. Monthly ad spend.

But remember: Opaque, shifting prices are straight out. You have the right to know exactly what you’re paying, every period, before the invoice shows up.

The spend-tiers are our solution to all of the above problems. It’s not a perfect system. We’ll be the first to acknowledge that. No system can account for everything (thank you, Gödel) or make everybody equally happy. All decisions with real-world applications require compromise.

This is the best balance we’ve found, and it allows us to deliver on Tulu’s promise to the people and companies who need it.

If we ever find a better one, we’ll use that.