How SaaS billing goes wrong – and how imgproxy bills less

We have a large cohort of clients who have previously used a SaaS for image processing but who now report 50-90% savings with self-hosted imgproxy. In this post, we explain why SaaS pricing quickly becomes unprofitable when an application starts to grow, and how imgproxy helps predict an accurate price.

SaaS pricing: unpredictable and expensive

With almost all SaaS pricing, the main problem is an inability to effectively predict the kind of bill you’ll get at the end of the billing period. Though SaaS offerings tend towards pricing predictability improvement, they’re still based on forecast metrics that are difficult to accurately predict.

More specifically, most SaaS solutions are billed based on the number of transformations, the number of original images, the amount of traffic, and so on. Complicating things even more, these metrics are rarely things that are under your control, especially when your application deals with a lot of user-generated content.

But the worst part is that all the SaaS solutions are post-paid! Imagine any of the following:

• A sudden spike in traffic.

• A bug that caused a lot of transformations.

• Experiencing a DDoS attack.

In any case, get ready for a surprising number of extra digits in your next bill. There are plenty of stories like this found online: scenarios where companies either have to pay unexpectedly high bills – or choose to make a fuss on social networks in an attempt to motivate the SaaS provider to make concessions.

And yes, all SaaS providers have a free tier. Of course, nothing can beat a zero-dollar bill. However, the problem is that those free tiers are only suitable for hobby projects. As soon as you start gaining traction, you will immediately see the bill skyrocketing.

imgproxy’s pricing is different

The more you grow—the more you pay. Common sense, and it’s fair. So, how does imgproxy stand out in this regard? Let’s dive in.

Free software for all …forever

First, imgproxy is open-core. This means it has a completely free open source version. While this open source imgproxy doesn't include the advanced Pro version’s features, it still fits most common use cases. So, if the open sourced feature set is enough for you, you owe us nothing but a bit of kudos (although we also accept the dollar equivalent of kudos 😉).

Of course, you’ll still have to pay for the infrastructure to run imgproxy. But the important thing is that your infrastructure is under your control. So, there’s no expectation of any unpleasant billing surprises.

No “per-image” billing

imgproxy Pro is billed based on the number of workers you run. A single worker can process a single image at a time, and the requests that come when all workers are busy are queued and processed as soon as the worker becomes available.

Launch a few workers, put a caching server or a CDN in front of imgproxy to free your workers from repetitive jobs, and you are set to serve hundreds of thousands of images daily. With any SaaS solution, you'd pay a fortune for such a load. With imgproxy, you'll pay a fixed price for the workers you run.

But wait, it's still pretty unpredictable, isn't it? What if you have a sudden spike in traffic? What if you grow faster than you expected? Won't you get the same surprise bill as with SaaS?

Well, no, you won't …because...

imgproxy Pro is pre-paid

Yes, you read that right! If you paid $49 for a month of imgproxy Pro, your imgproxy Pro bill for that month is $49. No ifs, no buts.

We offer both monthly and yearly subscriptions of different sizes, and you can switch between them at any time. We don't care how many images you processed, how many transformations you made, or volumes of traffic you had. As long as your workers utilization fits the subscription's limits, you are good to go.

The word "limit" may sound scary. What if you miscalculate the number of workers you need? What if you need more workers right now? Well, no problem!

imgproxy Pro limits are soft by default

Soft limits mean that you can exceed them at no extra cost for a reasonable amount of time. If you have a sudden spike in traffic, you can roll out more workers for a couple of hours to handle the load. If you need more workers for a few days to test something, just let us know. If you need more workers permanently, scale out your imgproxy installation first, we'll deal with the subscription upgrade later.

We don't charge you any extra nor make any changes to your subscription without your consent. We are here to help you grow, not to make you pay more.

Unlimited plans for the big folks

If you’re a big player and you serve millions of images daily, you may want to go above any limits – well, we have a special “Unlimited” plan for you. This is a yearly subscription with a fixed price and, as the name suggests, no limits: you can run as many workers as you need. It also includes first-priority support, and we are ready to consider adding some custom features for you.

"How many workers do I need?"

This is the most common question we get from our potential clients. The answer is: it depends. For instance, it depends on your imgproxy configuration, the transformations you use, the formats you serve, your cache hit rate, and so on.

We’re fully aware that this is hard to predict, especially for newcomers – and that's why we offer a free trial for imgproxy Pro. Though it's time-limited, this limit is soft as well. If you need more time to evaluate imgproxy Pro, just let us know.

The usual scenario is as follows:

1. Start with a small subscription but allow your auto-scaling to go above the subscription limits. (Remember: soft limits!)
2. Give your cache some time to warm up.
3. After a month or so, analyze your workers utilization and adjust your subscription accordingly. We usually don't bother our clients with limits in the first month.

But... why?

Why don't we charge for overages and don't have post-paid billing? The answer is simple: because we can. imgproxy is a self-hosted software, and we don't have to pay for the infrastructure it runs on. Thus, we don't have to charge you for the resources you use. We only charge you for the software itself.

We don't want you to pay more than you should. We only expect you to pay for the value you get from imgproxy. And we want you to be happy with the price you pay. That's why we made imgproxy pricing as predictable as possible.

Reach out to our team and check how much you can save with imgproxy’s approach to pricing!