Linking Pricing for Metered Features

Introduction

After creating metered features, you have the flexibility to track usage first before deciding how to charge for it. Chargebee's modular architecture allows you to monitor adoption trends, analyze customer behavior, and then link pricing when you're ready.

When you're ready to set up pricing, you can define the following:

• Included Usage: When associated with non-usage based items, included usage or entitlement limits can be defined for each plan or addon. For example, a cloud storage business could offer 5 GB of free cloud storage in its basic plan before requiring an upgrade.
• On-demand Usage: When associated with metered, usage based items, customers get charged based on usage. For example, an AI-powered data analytics platform could charge $0.02 per API call beyond the 1,000 free requests included in its starter plan.

Usage Based Pricing Models

Chargebee Billing currently supports the following usage based pricing models:

Fixed Fee + Overages Model

You can charge a fixed base fee for included usage, and usage based charges for on-demand usage.

For example, you can charge

• $70/month for 40 tasks automated(fixed charge for included usage), and
• $1.5 for every additional task automated(usage based charge for on-demand usage).

This model ensures a minimum revenue while scaling charges with customer consumption.

Pay As You Go (PAYG) Model

In this model, customers are billed only for what they use during a billing cycle. This flexible model ensures customers pay precisely for their consumption, making it a popular choice for on-demand services.

For example, you can charge

• $0.03 for every character translated for the customer(usage based charge for on-demand usage).
• $2 for every task automated(usage based charge for on-demand usage).

Prerequisites

Before you link pricing to the metered feature, you must:

• Setup product catalog for your business offerings by creating product families, plans, and addons.
• Configure price points for all currencies and billing frequencies as required.
• Specify usage based plans and addons as metered so that you can specify the usage based pricing under on-demand usage.

Linking Pricing for Metered Feature

Follow these steps to link pricing for a metered feature:

1. Navigate to Usages > Metered Features, and select the metered feature for which you want to link pricing.

2. On the metered feature details page, click Link Pricing.

   

3. On the next screen that appears Step 1: Choose items to link, all plans and addons on your Chargebee Billing site gets listed. Select the plans and addons that you want to link with this metered feature and click Next: Set Included Usage.

   

4. On the next screen Step 2: Set included usage, you can:

   • Click Add Item to link more plans or addons with the metered feature.
   • Specify the Included usage for every frequency of the associated plans and addons that you linked this metered feature with, in the previous step. If left blank, the metered feature linked to the respective plan/addon frequency is considered to have no usage limit.
     
   • Click the ellipsis icon to view the currencies and variants for each price point. While the currencies and variants inherit the included usage specified for the respective frequencies by default, you can modify the included usage for them individually as required.
     
   • Navigate to the On-demand usage tab and verify the usage based items that you've linked to this metered feature. You can add more items by clicking Add Item.
     

5. Once you're done, click Link Pricing.

You have successfully linked pricing to the metered feature.