Per-seat pricing has a compelling pitch: you only pay for who uses it. But that pitch assumes headcount is the right measure of how much value you’re getting from a tool. For project management software, it isn’t.
The headcount trap
Imagine two teams using the same PM tool:
- Team A: 12 engineers, 2 designers, 1 PM. Per-seat: $15/user/month = $225/month.
- Team B: 12 engineers, 2 designers, 1 PM, plus 4 contractors, 3 client stakeholders, and 2 part-time consultants. Per-seat: 24 × $15 = $360/month.
Both teams do the same amount of work. Team B pays 60% more because they invited more people to see it.
Who actually uses a PM tool?
Project management tools are collaboration surfaces. They only work if every stakeholder — contractors, clients, reviewers, legal — has access. Per-seat pricing punishes exactly the behavior that makes PM tools valuable.
So teams do what any rational actor would: they limit access. Contractors get screenshots in email instead of live access. Clients get weekly status PDFs. Context fragments. Decisions slow down. The tool that was supposed to make work visible makes it more opaque.
The alternative
Flat pricing says: pay for the work, not the people. Bring everyone who needs to see the work into the work.
A $99/month flat price for a 12-person team is roughly $8/user. The same price for a 40-person team (including every contractor and client) is $2.49/user. The tool costs the same. Your team scales freely.
That’s the math behind Neztdo’s pricing. We don’t charge per seat because we don’t think access to the work should be gated by who’s paying.