What will a feedback tool actually cost you?

Feedback tools are priced in three broadly different ways, and the difference between them only shows up at scale. This calculator models the two that grow with you, and compares them against a flat per-workspace tier that does not.

Seat-based pricing charges per editor — anyone who can reply to a post, change a status or move something on the roadmap. The model here is $19 per editor per month with a three-seat minimum, which is typical of the category. The cost is predictable but it taxes access: every time support, sales or customer success wants to read what customers are asking for, someone has to decide whether that person is worth a seat. Teams respond by sharing logins or by keeping feedback in a spreadsheet that the people who need it cannot see.

Tracked-user pricing charges by how many of your customers the tool has seen. The model here is $79 a month base plus $50 for each additional 1,000 tracked users beyond the first thousand. This is the model that surprises people, because the bill moves when you do nothing at all: a good launch, a spike of signups or a busy quarter raises the invoice. It also creates an awkward incentive — the more successfully you drive customers to your feedback board, the more you pay for having done it.

Flat per-workspace pricing charges for the capability tier and nothing else. Seats and tracked users are unlimited, so the bill is a decision you make once rather than a number that drifts. That is how Looph is priced, and it is why the third line on the chart above is flat.

What this leaves out. These are simplified approximations of public list prices, not quotes. Real invoices include annual discounts, startup programmes, add-ons, overage handling and negotiated enterprise terms, and every vendor changes its pricing periodically. Treat the output as a shape — which model overtakes which, and roughly where — rather than a number to put in a budget. Before committing, read the vendor's own pricing page, and check what counts as a “seat” and what counts as a “tracked user”, because those definitions vary more than the headline rates do.

The crossover point is usually the interesting part. Seat-based tools are cheapest for very small teams with a large audience; tracked-user tools are cheapest for large teams with a tiny audience. Flat pricing wins in the middle and keeps winning as either number grows — which, for most teams, is the direction both are heading.