Pretty much everyone in B2B SaaS knows who Gong is.
They got to the conversational intelligence category first, and are an active, engaged, and unique brand presence. They produce a ton of great content, spearheaded by a bunch of B2B marketing influencers.
In other words - Gong is “cool”.
Cool factor aside, one thing I’ve always found interesting about Gong (pricing guy talking) is that they don’t publish pricing on their site.
This bucks the “transparent pricing” trend that nearly every B2B SaaS industry watcher and consultant recommends in some form.
Jason Lemkin of SaaStr, for example, says “9.5 times out of 10, at least start with transparent, published pricing”.
Gong does not heed this advice.
Gong’s approach is to push site visitors to a pricing form. Using this form, the prospect can self-select a customer segment based on their FTE count, and ultimately enter an email to get contacted about pricing (see below).
I’ve gone through this process for my firm, and when I clicked “get customized quote” after reaching the end of the form, what I actually got was a bunch of emails and calls requesting a meeting to discuss pricing.
This is beyond non-transparency - I wouldn’t go quite this far, but according to Valueships, this type of pricing page practice is “evil”.
Gong’s not alone in using this approach, but they are probably the most highly-profiled vendor in the high-growth B2B SaaS space that is using this tactic. So I wanted to dig and figure out why.
Without Gong to turn to for pricing information, I turned to old friend Google.
With a cursory search, I found many references to Gong’s pricing on Reddit, G2, Capiche, and other customer sites, as well as the summary graphic below from conversational intelligence peer Avoma’s marketing site:
So the above has Gong positioned at a starting cost of ~$5,000 to $10,000 per year, assuming you pay the fixed fee and a small number of users. Pricing appears to be similar to Chorus.ai, their closest competitor.
Other sites (primarily customer review forums) suggest that Gong pricing can go as low as ~$70 per user, per month, and that the company will waive the $5K base price in competitive bids and discount between 20% to 60% in negotiations.
All together, the above sources give us a good sense of the pricing approach. And it’s a pretty straight forward one. Pretty standard seat-based subscription pricing model that incentivizes volume.
So why not publish pricing? Especially if competitors and customers are reporting your pricing, and thereby shaping a public pricing narrative for you?
I think there are probably a few pretty surface-level reasons:
They are expensive vs. category peers and they know it
They sell to upper midmarket and enterprise, so there’s more solution selling and customization
They likely discount and negotiate pretty broadly (see examples above)
They sell to sales decision makers that “get it” and doesn’t mind going through a more traditional qualification and negotiation process
But the most important reason for not publishing pricing is that they don’t have to (yet).
Everybody likes an easy out, right? Nothing like a cancelled plan or avoidance of an annoying task to give you a little dopamine hit. John Mulaney has a great runner on this in one of his standups.
This I believe is the case with Gong.
They’ve built a brand advantage (and a category), and secondarily, a product advantage, that brings them a volume of opportunities. Customers come to them saying “shut up and take my money” (this is an actual quote from a Gong buyer on Reddit, describing their buying experience).
Gong has the right moat for differentiation. So they’ve leaned on that and avoided publishing their price positioning.
But can they hold on to that approach?
Competitors in the “conversational intelligence” category are growing in number, and building stronger brands and products in the space. Our database counts 22 of them. Most publish their prices. Most have list pricing that tops out at Gong’s after-discounting pricing. Many have entry level plans targeting startups and prosumers that are priced as low as $10 to $20 per seat, per month.
Most of these competitors target smaller companies than Gong and Chorus.ai, and many will not offer the full suite of features that the major players like Gong provide. So the degree of head-to-head competitiveness in deals varies.
But pricing signals are becoming more prevalent in the category.
As noted previously, posts from customers on sites like G2, Capiche, and Reddit suggest that they are already well aware of relative market pricing for Gong and related solutions.
Many customers on these forums indicated that they like Gong, but are willing to bid out to newer, smaller players such as Wingman that have “good enough” products and competitive pricing. Again - we can argue about whether these buyers are Gong’s ICP, but at some point, you’ve saturated your ICP, and need to either move to new markets or launch more products to drive NRR and maintain growth.
Over time, feature commoditization will erode any material product advantages that Gong possesses, even if they launch new features.
Gong is definitely on the right path with creating and reinforcing a brand and messaging moat. I have no doubt they’ll continue to invest in that and succeed with that going forward.
They have passionate customers and a referral network that doesn’t care about their pricing. They’ve done a great job building and reinforcing that community. Their ICP is naturally less likely to switch solutions for price reasons than smaller entities.
These are strong differentiation pillars. However, competitors can and will move upmarket and encroach on Gong’s territory.
In the not-too-distant future, I believe they’ll be nudged to adapt their pricing page approach and publish some level of pricing.
This will be a good and low-risk thing for Gong to do.
Why? The pricing page can serve to reinforce the Gong brand strategy.
Gong (and others in the same market-leading position) shouldn’t be afraid to publish top-of-market price points. In many cases, that helps clarify positioning.
Just make it clear which customers are served and not served at different price levels.
Stay the course on the brand strategy, keep focused on the job-to-be-done, and customers will keep wanting to throw money at Gong.
Until that happens, here’s a meme to play me out, in true Gong style: