Products catalog
Learn about product types and pricing in Hyperline
In Hyperline, a product represents anything you sell to your customers. This can be a software, a capability, a service, etc. These products are managed in a products catalog, an interface allowing you to have a complete overview of your offering and manage in a single place the associated and reusable prices based on various parameters (currency, location, market, interval, duration, etc).
Setting up products enables the creation of pre-configured plans, subscriptions, or one-time payments for your customers.
Types of product
Hyperline enables you to represent a variety of products for sale by leveraging three product categories.
Fee
A “flat fee product” refers to a product or service for which the cost is a fixed, a consistent charge. It means that the customer or client pays a predetermined, flat fee, regardless of usage, quantity, or time duration. This contrasts with usage period where the cost may fluctuate based on factors like usage, consumption, or time.
This product can be used for subscription fees, fixed-rate services, addon items, or additional fixed costs. This provides predictability for your customer, as they know exactly how much they will pay without unexpected variations in costs.
For example, this product can be used to bill a fixed platform access to a software, or an onboarding fee.
This type of product can be:
- included in subscriptions using the Allow product to be added to a subscription option
- billed separately using the Allow this product to be charged as a one-time payment option
Pricing model
This product supports flat fee prices.
Seat
A “seat product” refers to a type of licensing where the cost of a software application or service is based on a number of items also named “seats” (users, accesses, licenses, etc).
This kind of product allows scalability, where customers can add or remove seats as needed, making it flexible for businesses with changing their requirements.
For example, this product can be used to bill a specific number of user licenses. Each license allowing one person to use a software or service.
This type of product can be included in subscriptions with the ability to link to product data for automatic adjustment of billable items or manual configuration.
Hyperline is enhancing its seat-based products by adding automated metering capabilities.
This will allow for background updates and customized payment terms, such as yearly pro-rated charges based on peak user counts.
Learn more about this in our Automated seat-based billing guide.
Pricing models
This product supports both volume or bulk prices.
Usage
An “usage-based product” refers to a type of product where the cost is directly tied to how much your customer uses or consumes the product. In this model, customers are typically charged based on their actual usage, rather than a flat fee.
This kind of product offers flexibility, allowing customers to pay for what they actually use with a cost varying with the amount or extent of usage. It enables “pay-as-you-go” or “pay-per-use” model where customers are billed periodically based on their usage during that period.
For example, this product can be used to bill data transfer in gigabytes, cloud computing in CPU hours, or the number of API calls in a SaaS product.
This type of product can be included in subscriptions and usage is measured using events representing specific occurrences or happenings and optionally containing metadata, which will be aggregated (counted, summed, etc) during a specific period relevant to the product. Detailed usage reports are also provided, making billing transparent and providing clarity on how charges are calculated.
Pricing models
This product supports volume, bulk, and basis points (BPS) prices.
Pricing models
Products in Hyperline support a variety of pricing models: flat fee pricing, volume pricing, bulk pricing, and basic point (BPS) pricing.
Parameters
Each product can also contain multiple prices (of different models) depending on different parameters: currency, country, interval, and commitment period. This enables you to represent all the cases you propose with fine granularity, depending on the specific characteristics of the markets you operate in, or how you wish to adjust pricing based on your customers’ engagement with your service.
In the example above, the product costs 200€ per month except for UK customers where it’s 220£ per month, or 2200€ per year except for customers committed 2 years where the price is reduced to 2000€ per year.
The more specific or narrowed parameter values (such as a specific country or a specific commitment period) take precedence over the broader values (such as “all”).
Flat fee
Predetermined, fixed and unchanging price.
Volume
Cost per unit or item is adjusted proportionally to the quantity of items purchased or consumed. Usually, the more a customer buys, the lower the cost per unit becomes.
Volume pricing often involves multiple price tiers, which can be used to change the price depending on certain volume thresholds.
In the example above, the customer is billed 50€ per unit between 0 and 10 then 40€ per unit between 10 and 50, then 20€ per unit, so 2360€ for 63 units.
We offer you a preview of the price evolution depending on the quantity which can help you have an overview of the trend a price can have; and a preview of the rendering of the price for your customer (e.g. on their checkout page).
Pay tier in full
The “Pay tier in full” option can be activated on a per-tier basis. This option allows you to charge the full price of the tier (i.e. price per unit ⨉ to value) if the consumption is contained in this tier range.
In the example above, the customer is billed 250€ for this product between 0 and 5 units regardless of their consumption, then a progressive price for higher levels (e.g. 370€ for 9 units).
Packaged
As per a volume pricing, a packaged pricing adjusted proportionally to the quantity of items purchased or consumed, usually involving multiple price tiers.
The difference is that you can define packages of units, allowing you to define a price for a quantity of items inside a specific tier.
In the example above, the customer is billed 6€ per 20 units if less than or equal to 200, then 4€ per 20 units if more than 200 (e.g. so 100€ for 400 units).
Bulk
The total number of units determines the tier used and therefore the cost of all units. Reaching a higher tier value will decrease the price per unit.
In the example above, the customer is billed 50€ per unit if less than or equal to 10 or 30€ per unit if more than 10, so 1020 for 34 units.
As with volume pricing, the “Pay tier in full” is also available, and we offer an overview of the price evolution and final rendering on the customer’s checkout page.
Basis Points (BPS)
Method used to calculate prices based on a given percentage applied on the number of items considered in the computation (i.e. usage billed for the period). Tiers can be defined to vary this percentage.
As with volume pricing, the “Pay tier in full” is also available, and we offer an overview of the price evolution and final rendering on the customer’s checkout page.