Why Per-Seat Pricing for Support Tools is Bleeding Your SaaS Dry

Source: Dev.to

The Hidden Cost of Per‑Seat Pricing for Support Software

You know what’s weird? Every developer‑tool price model is different—Stripe charges per transaction, Twilio per message, AWS per compute hour. But support software? Everyone charges per seat.

Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, Help Scout – $50‑150 /month for each person who can look at a support ticket.
And we’ve just… accepted this?

Why the per‑seat model is probably costing you way more than you think

Support isn’t a department any more—it’s everyone.

Under per‑seat pricing, each of these people needs a $79 /month seat—even if a PM touches only 5 tickets a month or an engineer just needs to view a stack trace.

What your costs look like

const team = {
  supportAgents: 3,      // These actually need it
  engineers: 4,         // Need occasional access
  productManagers: 2,   // Review feature requests
  founders: 2,          // VIP escalations
};

const seatsNeeded = Object.values(team).reduce((a, b) => a + b, 0);
const monthlyBill = seatsNeeded * 79;

console.log(`${seatsNeeded} seats × $79 = $${monthlyBill}/month`);
// 11 seats × $79 = $869/month

That’s $869 /month just so engineers can occasionally check if a bug was already reported.

When seats are expensive, teams get creative

The shared‑login approach (don’t do this)

export ZENDESK_LOGIN=support@company.com
export ZENDESK_PASSWORD=hunter2
# "Just use the team account"

• No audit trail
• Security nightmare
• Likely violates SOC 2 compliance

Screenshot relay

• Engineer: “Can you forward me that ticket?”
• Support: takes screenshot, pastes in Slack

Now the context lives in three different places.

The “human API”

Support becomes a proxy layer between your team and customer feedback. Every escalation adds latency.

All of this operational overhead doesn’t show up on your SaaS bill, but it’s real.

Cost comparisons

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Pattern: The more people who need access, the worse per‑seat pricing gets.

AI changes the economics

Let’s say an AI handles 40 % of your tickets automatically.

// Per‑seat economics with AI
const ticketsBefore = 1000;
const ticketsAfterAI = ticketsBefore * 0.6; // AI handles 40%
const seatsNeeded = 8; // Still need humans for oversight
const perSeatCost = seatsNeeded * 79; // $632/month – UNCHANGED

// Per‑ticket economics with AI
const perTicketBase = 29; // $29 covers up to 1 000 tickets
const actualCost = ticketsAfterAI < 1000
  ? perTicketBase
  : perTicketBase + (ticketsAfterAI - 1000) * 0.02;

• With per‑seat pricing, your AI investment saves you nothing on software costs—you still need the same seats for oversight and edge cases.
• With per‑ticket pricing, costs decrease as AI handles more volume. The efficiency gains translate directly to savings.

When per‑seat can make sense

These scenarios are rare. Most companies have more people who should have support access than they currently do.

The hidden overhead you don’t see on the invoice

                 What you see:
                 ┌──────────────┐
                 │ Software bill │ ← $632/month
                 └──────────────┘
  ─────────────────────────────────────────
                 What you don't:
          ┌─────────────────────────┐
          │  Escalation delays      │ ← Waiting for access
          │  Context handoffs       │ ← Explaining issues
          │  Slack threads about    │ ← tickets
          │  tickets not in         │ ← the ticket system
          │  Knowledge silos        │ ← Engineers miss patterns
          │  Customer frustration   │ ← "Let me check with..."
          └─────────────────────────┘

Studies show cross‑functional tickets take 2‑3× longer when access is restricted.
If an average ticket costs $15 in labor and you add 30 minutes of coordination overhead, that’s $7.50 per ticket in hidden costs.

Per‑seat pricing charges for capacity, not usage. You pay the same whether someone handles 500 tickets or 5.

TL;DR

• Modern dev teams have 3‑4× more people who need support access than traditional “agents”.
• Workarounds (shared logins, screenshot relay, human proxies) add operational overhead that never appears on invoices.
• AI makes it worse—per‑seat costs stay flat while AI handles the easy tickets.
• Per‑ticket pricing aligns with how dev tools should work: pay for what you use, not who might use it.

Run the math for your team. Count everyone who should have access, not just who currently does.

Originally published at Dispatch Tickets. We’re building an API‑first ticketing system with per‑ticket pricing—unlimited users included.

Out if the per‑seat tax is hitting your team.