Pricing test management without the per-seat tax
Most QA tools charge you more every time someone touches a test case. We don’t, on purpose. Here is the math, the reasoning, and the awkward conversation it sometimes causes with finance.
- Most test management is priced per seat. The result: you pay more every time you let a developer or PM near the test record.
- That model used to make sense. For modern QA — where everyone needs read access and many people need to write occasionally — it’s an active disincentive to do the right thing.
- We charge a flat monthly fee per workspace, with user-count tiers (Free / Starter / Pro) instead of per-seat metering. The bill doesn’t move when a contractor joins for a sprint.
- For a 10-person product team with 2–3 testers, this is meaningfully cheaper than typical per-seat plans — and the cost is predictable enough to put on a budget line.
01The seat tax, illustrated
Here’s the rough shape of a year of test management for a team of three dedicated QAs plus seven collaborators (developers, PMs, designers who occasionally need to look at a result or file a defect). Pricing varies; the spread between models is the point.
The numbers are illustrative — vendors move pricing and offer discounts — but the pattern doesn’t. Per-seat pricing scales with headcount; flat pricing doesn’t.
02Why per-seat got popular
Per-seat pricing made sense in 2010. Software was bought by a procurement team. A “seat” mapped to a named licence on a desk. The buyer wanted to know exactly who was using what. Vendors loved it because revenue scaled with company size.
For test management specifically, per-seat also fit the old shape of QA — a discrete team of testers who owned the tool, and nobody else needed to touch it. Engineers filed bugs in a separate tracker. PMs read reports out of a different dashboard. The number of seats was the number of testers, and that was a reasonable proxy for value.
That shape doesn’t describe modern QA. Engineers run their own smoke tests. PMs read live cycle dashboards. Designers file accessibility findings. Customer support links bugs back to specific failed runs. The number of people who interact with the test record is much larger than the number of testers — and growing.
03Where the model breaks for QA
Per-seat pricing creates four awkward incentives that nobody wants but everybody has:
- Gate-keeping read access. If a viewer seat costs $30/month, you start excluding people from the test record. That excludes the people who should be informed by it.
- Penalising contractors. A two-week consultant on a release crunch costs a full month of seat licensing. You start sharing logins. Audit hates this.
- Misaligned with how teams actually scale. The cost ramps when you hire engineers, not when you hire testers. Hiring an engineer makes your test management bill go up.
- Forces awkward finance conversations. “Why did our QA tool bill jump $400 this month?” “Because we onboarded the new product team.” That’s a fight you shouldn’t need to have.
04The four principles behind our pricing
Cost should be predictable
You should be able to forecast next year’s line item without knowing your future headcount mix. Flat tiers do this; per-seat doesn’t.
Don’t punish visibility
The test record gets more useful as more people read it. Pricing that gates readers is pricing that breaks the product’s job.
Headcount flexes; price shouldn’t
Bringing in a contractor for a sprint should be a Slack message, not a procurement ticket. Tiered user-count headroom is built for that.
The model should fit the company size
Small teams want simple bills. Mid-size teams want predictable tiers. Both should be able to read the price page and know the answer in 10 seconds.
05What we charge instead
Three tiers, flat per workspace, monthly USD. The same number you read here is the number you pay.
For small teams getting started. No credit card, no time limit.
- 5 users
- 2 projects
- 200 active cases
- 1 GB attachments
For teams that outgrew Free. Same workspace, same data, more headroom.
- 15 users
- Unlimited projects
- 10 GB attachments
- Everything in Free
For 5–50 person QA functions. Still flat, still predictable.
- 50 users
- Unlimited projects
- 100 GB attachments
- Everything in Starter
If you grow past 50 users, talk to us about the Business plan. We’ll quote something flat and predictable for that shape too — just not on the public price page.
06The honest tradeoff
Flat pricing isn’t universally better. Two cases where per-seat does win on price:
- A solo tester, no collaborators, ~$10/month per-seat plans — cheaper than our $19/month Starter in absolute dollars. (Free covers this case fine, but if you outgrow Free, the math shifts.)
- A very stable team that never adds anyone temporarily and never invites read-only stakeholders — per-seat’s downside doesn’t hit, so its predictability advantage is moot.
For everyone else — the 5-to-50 person teams who flex contractors, share read access with engineers and PMs, and want to put a number on a budget line and not have it move — flat is honest and cheaper.
Pricing should reward the behaviour that makes the tool valuable. Per-seat test management pricing rewards the opposite — gatekeeping access. Flat pricing for the 5-to-50 segment is honest about what the tool actually does for a small team. — the principle we keep coming back to
07Frequently asked questions
Is flat pricing always cheaper than per-seat?
For teams that flex headcount, almost always. For very stable teams of one or two testers, per-seat can be cheaper at the low end. Past 5 users, flat pricing typically wins.
How does TestOrchestrator make money on flat pricing?
The same way most SaaS does — at scale across many customers, with upgrades when teams cross plan limits. Predictable for you, predictable for us.
What if our team is bigger than 50?
Flat pricing has a ceiling. Past 50 users, talk to us about the Business plan — we’ll quote something flat and predictable for that shape too.
Do you cap test cases too?
Free is capped at 200 active cases. Paid plans don’t have practical case caps for the team sizes they target — see the pricing page for current numbers.
Predictable monthly. No per-seat tax.
Start on Free. Move to Starter when you outgrow it. Same workspace, same data, no replatforming.