Why Doesn’t Sked Offer An Unlimited Accounts Plan?

April 26, 2024
By
Hugh Stephens

Every now and then we get asked whether Sked offers a plan with unlimited accounts. Short answer: we don’t. This post aims to explain why.

Our value metric is accounts

When you work out your pricing model, you need to work out your “value metric”. This is the attribute(s) that align our value as a vendor with how you see value as a customer.

Other vendors choose other value metrics, for better or worse (every customer is different!). For example, some vendors charge you by “seat” (user) and account. 

Others split accounts into different types (by platform or “brand”) rather than the simple “pick the number of accounts you have” model we’ve chosen.

Within that number of accounts, you can pick a plan to get the feature complexity that you need (as is common with other vendors as well). The calculator on our pricing page is then pretty simple.

It allows us to offer unlimited seats

The key thing to remember with Sked is that we don’t charge you per seat. This means that, when your business or team grows, you don’t have to pay for every user you add.

Similarly, you don’t need to share a seat with a shared password between multiple people (Eeek!). This is a bad security practice for one thing, but also means you don’t get the benefit of everyone having their own login, which allows you to see who's edited what, and make comments between users within the platform.

It keeps our pricing simple and predictable

The aim of Sked’s pricing is to be as simple and predictable for our customers as possible. 

In-house teams generally have a relatively static number of accounts to manage, then just need to pick the right plan based on the complexity of their needs. If you bring in a freelance designer or copywriter for a campaign, you can add them to Sked as a new user for no extra cost, and remove them when their work is done.

It allows your business to scale affordably

The pricing model is also easily “value aligned” for our agency customers. Most agencies managing social media for clients will charge their clients proportionally to the number of accounts they manage for the client. With each new client (and new contract) you get more accounts, and when an existing client adds new social accounts, their contract size goes up because there’s more work to be done.

Agencies don’t (and probably can’t) offer unlimited account management because it’s impossible to know what the cost will really be to service the client. 

Accounts make the most sense here – not seats – because accounts scale with clients while seats/users doesn’t. One account manager will typically work across a number of clients, so if you use a vendor that you pay for seats, you’ll have a choppy cost where it suddenly increases with each account manager you need to hire – for a time you’ll “over-pay” until that account manager is at capacity. Alternatively, bringing on board a single freelancer for a campaign or client can quickly become cost prohibitive.

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A simple agency scenario

What does this mean in reality, and how does it change over time? Here’s some simple worked examples against hypothetical other vendors. Imagine:

Sue Starts Social Surge

Social Surge is a new agency run by Sue alongside 2 contract/freelance team members and they’re searching for a new social media management platform. They currently manage 3 different brands, each with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn accounts. 

Sue has come across two vendors she likes. For the sake of simplicity let’s assume the functionality is the same across the vendors from Sue’s perspective, and she intends to pay monthly.

  • Hypothetical Vendor 1 (HV1) is an advanced “all inclusive” platform and charges $300 per seat (user) in an unlimited accounts plan.
  • Hypothetical Vendor 2 (HV2) has a simplified offering (but “just enough” for Sue’s needs today) and charges $99 per month for 1 “brand group” of accounts (where you get 1 of each platform type) and then $39 per extra “brand group”, plus $29 per extra user with the first 3 users included.

Social Surge will pay $900 per month for HV1. [Perhaps Sue will get her team to share a login and reduce this cost, although we wouldn’t suggest it!]

Social Surge will pay $138 per month for HV2.

With Sked Social, Social Surge would pay $169 per month on the “Professional” plan:

Social Surge wins new business and expands!

Sue signs another 3 clients, bumping her total portfolio to 6 clients. Great work! She adds a full time team member to make a total team size of 4 users.

For HV1, she will now apay $1,200 per month.

For HV2, she will pay $323 per month.

With Sked, she will now pay $289 a month.

Sked’s pricing scales up easily ($120) for the extra 3 clients, while the other two vendors’ costs blow out substantially.

Social Surge runs a campaign for a customer

One of Sue’s clients runs a big Christmas campaign, which involves a second Instagram account used for competition entries. Being a savvy business person she—of course—charges the client for the extra work, which involves an extra graphic designer and a copywriter to work on the campaign.

For HV1, she now has 6 users – $1800 per month.

For HV2, she will now pay for a full “brand” (+$39) just for that one extra account because the client has two Instagram accounts, plus the two extra users (+$29/ea). Her new total is $420.

While for Sked, her price will simply go up to $299 per month for the one additional account.

As you can see, while HV1’s unlimited plan might seem a good idea for Sue in some contexts, it scales really poorly as her needs change over time.

For HV2, even though the “entry price” is much lower, the combination of having “brands” rather than  “accounts”, in addition to having to pay for extra users, makes costs complex and inflexible as the business scales.

Ready to simplify your social media management?

Sked's pricing model is strategically designed to align with your growth without complicating costs. Our focus on charging by accounts rather than seats/users ensures that as your business expands—whether you're bringing on more clients or managing more social media accounts—the pricing remains transparent, predictable, and affordable. This approach avoids the pitfalls of sudden cost increases and the complexity of managing multiple users or accounts under different pricing schemes. With Sked, you can ensure that your social media management scales smoothly alongside your business, making us an ideal partner for both in-house teams and agencies.

Whether you’re just starting out—like Sue!—or looking to streamline your current operations, Sked provides a robust platform that grows with you, without hidden fees or the need for shared logins. Experience firsthand how Sked can make social media management simpler and more efficient for your business.

Ready to see how Sked can transform your social media strategy? Start your free trial today and explore a tailored solution that fits your unique business needs.

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