The growth tax: software that charges you for selling

Consider what each one does to a decision you make every week.

Charging by the quote

A plan that includes twenty quotes a month, with a higher plan above it, sounds reasonable until you are at nineteen on the twenty-fourth. Now a marginal enquiry — the one from somebody who probably will not book, for an event that is probably too small — costs you money to answer.

The rational response is to not answer it. Which is the exact opposite of what a business trying to grow should do, and it is being caused by a pricing decision made by a software vendor.

The effect is worse in the shoulder season, when the marginal enquiry is precisely the one you should be chasing hardest.

Charging by the order

A percentage has the same shape in a smoother form. It is invisible when you are small and substantial when you are not, and it applies equally to the customer the platform found for you and the customer who has ordered from you monthly since 2023. There is a separate guide on that arithmetic.

The subtler cost is on price. A caterer paying eighteen per cent has to price with eighteen per cent in it, which means the number the customer sees is higher than it needs to be, which loses some orders that would otherwise have closed.

The argument for the other side

Both models exist for real reasons, and it would be dishonest not to say so.

A percentage aligns the vendor with you: they make money when you do, and if the channel brings nothing it costs nothing. For a kitchen with no reputation and spare capacity, that is a genuinely good deal, and better than paying a fixed fee for a tool that sits unused.

Per-quote pricing lets a very small operation start cheaply. Somebody sending eight quotes a month should not pay what somebody sending three hundred pays, and a tiered plan is one way to express that.

The objection is not that either is unfair. It is that both put a cost on the activity you are trying to increase, and that cost arrives at the worst possible moment — the month you are busiest, or the week you are trying to fill.

What flat actually means

Flat pricing has its own honest disadvantage, and it is worth stating: a kitchen that sends four quotes a month pays the same as one that sends four hundred, which is worse for the first one. That is the trade. What you get for it is that no decision you make during the month has a software cost attached to it.

Send as many quotes as you like. Take as many orders as you like. Have a season that doubles your revenue. The invoice is the same, and nothing in the software has an opinion about how hard you are trying.