Why Your Billing Model Is Holding You Back (And What to Do About It)

Let’s be blunt: the traditional license-based billing model is on life support. It might look tidy in a spreadsheet, but it’s built for a world that no longer exists. Revenue Cloud customers — especially those still tied to fixed-price, all-you-can-eat licensing — are sitting on untapped revenue. And worse, they’re haemorrhaging margin.

Salesforce knows it. That’s why they’re rolling out Flex Credits in Agentforce — a usage-based pricing model that finally aligns value with cost. If this sounds a lot like how AWS transformed the world of infrastructure, it’s because it is. Welcome to the future: usage-based, modular, metered, and scalable. The old model doesn’t just lag — it’s a liability.

From Feature-Based to Usage-Based: A Wake-Up Call

In the old days, Salesforce ran its own datacentres, so they could afford the “$xxx/user/month for all features” model. But since moving to Hyperforce and deploying across AWS, they’re now paying for compute, storage, and bandwidth just like the rest of us. The economics have changed — their business model had to change with it.

Usage-based pricing isn’t just smarter — it’s survival.
This is the exact model that fuelled AWS’s meteoric rise. Customers only pay for what they use, scale dynamically, and experiment faster. It’s a revenue engine and a margin protector rolled into one.

So why are so many Revenue Cloud clients — and traditional retailers — still clinging to fixed pricing like it’s a warm blanket? Because change is hard. Especially when it involves finance, tech, and customer behaviour all at once.

The Problem with Top-Line Obsession.

Here’s a cold, hard truth: selling more doesn’t matter if you’re losing money on every sale. Too many businesses chase top-line growth without optimising for profitability. The worst part? They don't even know how much money they’re leaving on the table because their billing model has zero visibility into usage.

When you treat your services like a buffet, everyone over-consumes and nobody values what they get.

Instead, imagine a world where you charge based on real usage, where customers scale up or down without friction, and your revenue grows predictably and sustainably. That’s not a fantasy — that’s a usage-based model with metered billing, integrated into your Revenue Cloud stack.

Credit Cards, Cashflow, and Consumer Expectations

Now let’s talk consumer psychology. People are conditioned by platforms like Netflix, Spotify, AWS, and even Uber – hell even your car is consuming based on usage – you just didn’t recognise it when it was dinosaur juice. Subscription and micro-billing models aren't just accepted — they’re expected. Traditional “invoice me annually” businesses are now out of sync with the way the modern buyer thinks and pays and more importantly with the way their suppliers are charging.

We’ve worked with businesses that used to rely on large, upfront deals — 12-month contracts paid in advance. We helped them transition to monthly,
credit-card-driven revenue streams, and the result was astounding:

• Faster onboarding
  
• Lower churn
  
• Higher LTV
  
• Cleaner cashflow
  

But here’s the catch: you don’t just divide your annual pricing by 12 and call it a day. You need to rethink packaging, delivery, usage monitoring, and more. We’ve helped clients rearchitect their Salesforce and other platforms to support real-time usage tracking, flexible pricing tiers, and intelligent billing logic.

It’s not easy. But it works. Don’t believe me that your business model supports this?

• Pay-Per-Wash: Laundry Machines in Low-Income Housing
  In parts of the US, UK and Australia, landlords in public housing estates have ditched monthly appliance fees in favour of smart, pay-per-use washing machines. Tenants tap a card or phone, and only pay when they wash. No usage? No charge.
  
  What’s wild is that this model increased appliance longevity (people treat them better when they pay), improved access (no upfront cost barrier), and gave housing authorities real-time data on machine health and usage patterns. Predictable revenue + better service = win.
  
  You read that right: public housing figured out usage-based billing before half the SaaS world did.
  
• Deere-as-a-Service: Tractors on Demand
  John Deere doesn’t just sell tractors anymore — they sell output. With precision agriculture tech built into their machines, farmers can now lease equipment based on acres ploughed, not hours used. You only pay when the thing is doing work.
  
  This isn’t just clever; it’s a survival move. Farming is feast or famine. Usage-based billing gives growers flexibility when harvests are lean, while still letting Deere monetise the good years. More importantly, Deere now has a data moat — they know exactly what’s happening in the field, literally.
  
  This is a century-old tractor company doing metered SaaS before Salesforce caught up. Let that sink in.
  
• Bee Leasing and Hive Monitoring
  Yes, beekeeping.
  
  Commercial pollination outfits (especially in California) are now renting out beehives for almond pollination — but with a twist: they only charge based on active pollination hours and hive health, tracked via IoT sensors and satellite imaging.
  
  If a hive underperforms, the grower pays less. If it’s buzzing at peak efficiency? Cha-ching.
  
  It’s literally cloud-based billing for bees. Welcome to SaaS: Swarming as a Service.
  

If farmers, landlords, and literal bees can move to usage-based pricing, what’s your excuse?

You’re already paying variable infrastructure costs in the background with Hyperforce and AWS — but your customer-facing billing model is stuck in the past. That’s not just inefficient, it’s dangerous.

The world’s moving to consumption-based economics, even in fields that never touched a keyboard. You don’t need to invent this model — you need to adapt it. And Revenue Cloud, done right, gives you the platform to do it.

Revenue Cloud + AppGenie: Why We’re Built for This

Revenue Cloud gives you the tools. But making them sing — that takes real expertise.
We’ve worked across the stack to rewire legacy revenue models into high-performance billing engines. Whether it’s exposing APIs to meter consumption, integrating usage with CPQ, or creating modular offerings that scale with customer value — we know how to make Revenue Cloud work like a SaaS business, not a traditional one.

So if you're still pricing like it’s 2010, it’s time to ask yourself: what are you leaving on the table?

We’re here to help you modernise — not with fluff, but with real, technical expertise that drives bottom-line results.

Want to transform your billing model and start capturing the value you’re already delivering?

Let’s talk. No bullshit. Just outcomes.