In situations (a), (b), (c), my observation is that developers are not afraid to fork out $10-$100 per SaaS service.
Your point to sell to marketing/product etc. hold holds true and I would agree 100% from experience. At the last start-up I worked at, it was the Product people that would regularly find cute little SaaS tools to fill holes. It goes without saying that most SaaS tools should not be made with the stereotypical hardcore dev in mind but rather with product/marketing/sales in mind just as much.
Channeling patio11 here: $10-100 is really cheap, unless you're talking about per developer, per month, and then it's just cheap. Well, $10/dev/mo is cheap, $100/dev/mo is reasonable.
If your service is only $10/dev/mo, figure out a way to make it worth more, or raise prices, or figure out a way to never have a support call. Support on that will kill several months worth of profit, per response.
Generally agree. What we are learning about our own product is that customers will either pay us really nice amount OR not pay us at all. We started out thinking we'd charge $29/mo. Now we are up to $99/mo and so far, we haven't had a single rejection as a result of pricing. Plenty of guys just don't get the need for our tool - but it isn't the price. Guys who get it just gloss over the $99/mo price.
That said, I can tell you that at least for a start-up, crossing a certain threshold can mean the difference between just being able to purchase the tool or needing your boss' approval. For the last start-up I worked at, the treshold was closer to $50 or so. We wouldn't think twice about tools in that vicinity. Soon as it crossed the $100 mark, we'd need the CEO's okay. My feeling is the upper limit on that shifts greatly depending on the different segments within enterprise but that is my one data point.
Or (d) they try to build it themselves, realize how horribly painful/complicated/problemsome/etc it is, and decide to find another approach.
Of course, all of those are more likely to drive adoption of the SaaS tool if it helps drive revenue or increase costs. aka If someone can pay $1 to avoid $100 of work or earn an extra $100, then the odds are in the SaaS tool's favor.
(Granted, I am biased as I work for Twilio but I also built SMS systems long before I joined last year.)
(a) they raise funding
(b) or they have some revenue or profitability
(c) or they work for BigCo or at funded start-up
In situations (a), (b), (c), my observation is that developers are not afraid to fork out $10-$100 per SaaS service.
Your point to sell to marketing/product etc. hold holds true and I would agree 100% from experience. At the last start-up I worked at, it was the Product people that would regularly find cute little SaaS tools to fill holes. It goes without saying that most SaaS tools should not be made with the stereotypical hardcore dev in mind but rather with product/marketing/sales in mind just as much.