Evergreen pricing — an indefinite subscription that renews on a recurring basis without a predetermined end date — is a rising star in B2B SaaS for one big reason: it’s deeply ingrained in our B2C purchasing habits. If you’ve ever subscribed to a service that auto-renews — be it Netflix, Amazon Prime, Blue Apron, or Xbox Game Pass — you’re already familiar with evergreen pricing.

It’s time to consider whether to implement evergreen pricing (if you haven’t already) and how you may be able to handle it more effectively (if you have). But this is often easier said than done. While easy to understand, evergreen pricing is deceptively complex to implement in B2B SaaS systems. And it has to synergize with a larger pricing ecosystem. For example, many companies would like their customers to eventually graduate from evergreen pricing to a termed subscription that provides a more reliable source of revenue.

"While easy to understand, evergreen pricing is deceptively complex to implement." 

Whether your company is new to evergreen pricing or reimplementing it, it’s worth considering the Nue platform as your tool of choice for getting it done. Recent updates to Nue’s Lifecycle Manager and Everything Billing provide robust and intuitive options for creating, managing, and billing evergreen subscriptions. Here’s why this pricing model matters, what often poses a challenge, and how Nue changes the game.

1. They Are Familiar and Low-Risk.

On top of the evergreen pricing model's prevalence in B2C spaces, it's also perceived as low risk. If the customer decides the product is not a good fit, they can leave quickly with little unnecessary expense. As a result, evergreen pricing can help to close deals for customers who balk at the commitment of a long-term subscription. Evergreen bundles (where multiple products are paid for on a recurring basis) can also be an effective way to get new products in front of customers without requiring a long-term commitment.

2. They Are a Stepping Stone to Termed Subscriptions..

Evergreen pricing works best when the customer can switch to traditional termed subscriptions at any time. The customer has the incentive of being able to negotiate discounts, while the company gets the stability of guaranteed long-term revenue. That said, customers may actually ask to move from termed subscriptions to evergreen pricing during uncertain times. When the alternative is simply terminating service, this can help prevent churn. 

1. It’s Hard to Handle Evergreen Pricing with Legacy B2B SaaS Infrastructure.

Ironically, the simplicity of evergreen subscriptions can make the pricing model hard to implement in a B2B context. The legacy go-to-market tech stack is largely specialized for customized termed pricing, complex negotiations, and a range of possible add-ons (like professional services) that use unique pricing models. This is hard to square with offering a static pricing per-month without a term.

"The legacy go-to-market tech stack is largely specialized for customized termed pricing." 

As a result, companies that want to offer evergreen pricing at scale often need to turn to a third-party e-commerce billing platform to handle the logistics. This is most commonly Stripe, which brings new challenges — chief among them Stripe’s lack of pricing agility and its demand for a percentage of revenue on collections. Whether you employ Stripe or something else it also makes future change more difficult, since you need to ensure the third-party platform handles any changes you make to your own infrastructure. All of this has the impact of decreasing go-to-market agility.

2. Billing Isn’t Equipped to Switch Between Evergreen and Termed Subscriptions.

It’s very difficult for evergreen subscriptions to serve as a stepping stone to termed subscriptions, because this change overwhelms many billing systems. Particularly if evergreen pricing is bundled with other kinds of pricing, switching a (for example) $100/month ongoing subscription to a negotiated 36-month contract will likely take manual adjustment. 

This switch is especially tough if you are attempting to co-term — in other words, unify a newly changed evergreen-to-termed subscription with other subscriptions in a contract. Co-terming is great for helping customers grow their relationship with you, since it prevents the complexity of multiple billing cycles, but for many companies infrastructure is not well-equipped to actually handle it.

Nue provides a robust toolset for integrating evergreen pricing alongside termed subscription pricing. The Nue platform obviates the need for a third-party billing system, because Nue handles the entire quoting and billing process for any B2B SaaS pricing model. If you’re able to configure the system for quoting, you’ve already configured it for billing. 

You’ll benefit from a streamlined experience beginning at the very start of the go-to-market motion. Designating a product to use evergreen pricing is as simple as using a drop-down menu in the Lifecycle Manager’s Price Builder. It’s also easy to create and manage evergreen bundles; you can designate every item in a bundle for evergreen pricing, or make exceptions for specific bundle items (see below). If you or the customer wants to transition from evergreen pricing to a termed subscription, doing so is as simple as selecting the “Change Term” option in Lifecycle Manager.

Nue’s Everything Billing solution empowers you to bill for evergreen subscriptions alongside everything else you offer, so you can handle complex bundles with ease. If you asked to bill an evergreen subscription for multiple billing periods in advance, for example, you can set a future date and invoice appropriately (see below).

If you need to co-term a newly changed evergreen subscription with other subscriptions, you can easily automate this process. You just need to select the “co-term for Evergreen” option in the order’s Line Editor. The subscription is first co-termed to the current date, and then extended until the date the customer requested. 

To learn more about Nue’s capabilities for evergreen pricing, visit our tutorial page, and read about the latest Nue updates to discover other enhancements to the Nue platform.