Why a discount with an end date is worth reporting
Every buying guide compares headline prices. Almost none of them record what those prices become.
This piece came out of maintenance rather than reporting. Over recent weeks the Softwr catalogue has been rechecked product by product against vendors' own pricing pages, and the same shape kept appearing: a rate presented as the price, with a second rate named a few lines below it, or in a footnote, or in the terms attached to a trial. Nobody is hiding anything. The information is published. It is simply published in the one place a buyer reads once and never returns to.
That gap is worth closing, because the decision people actually make is a multi-year one. A tool chosen on a six-month promotional rate is a tool being paid for at the full rate for years four through ten, and the comparison that produced the decision never saw that number.
Everything below is taken from the vendor's own page, and every source is listed at the end with the date it was checked. Where a figure was ambiguous or contradicted itself on the same page, it was left out rather than guessed at.
The vendors that name a date
These are the clearest cases, because the vendor has put a specific date in writing. That is more transparency than the category norm, not less, and it is worth saying so.
OVHcloud
OVHcloud publishes its Public Cloud pricing in a table with a column headed "Price on April 1, 2026". A vendor building the future price into the same table as the current one is unusual and genuinely useful: it means a buyer modelling three years of infrastructure cost has the second number without having to ask for it.
Xero
Xero advertises 90% off for six months. After that its plans revert to $25, $55 and $90. Two details do most of the damage to a naive comparison. The discount excludes add-ons and payment processing fees, so the effective saving is smaller than 90% of a real bill. And Xero states separately that prices rise from 1 October 2026, which means the figure a subscriber reverts to may not be the figure that was on the page when they signed up.
SmoresUp
SmoresUp runs $7.99 a month reverting to $9.99 after 4 July 2026. A two dollar move is trivial in isolation, and it is included here precisely because it is trivial: the same mechanism operates at every price point, and a family app is as likely to use it as a cloud platform.
The vendors that name a term instead
More common than a calendar date is a term: a number of months after which the rate changes. The revert price is usually stated. The date is left for the buyer to calculate.
| Product | Promotional rate | Reverts to | Term |
|---|---|---|---|
| StyleSeat | $19 per month | $35 per month | After 3 months |
| RingCentral Webinar 500 | Discounted rate | $75 per host per month | After 1 year |
| Monarch | 30% off | Standard rate | First year, new users only |
| Practice-Web | $179 per month | $129 per month | After 12 months |
The one that goes the other way
Practice-Web is in that table for a reason. Its first twelve months cost more than the months after, at $179 falling to $129. Read quickly, that looks like an error. It is not: front-loading covers implementation, and dental practice software carries a real onboarding cost.
It matters because it breaks the assumption underneath every other row. "The price goes up after the intro period" is a rule of thumb, not a rule, and a buyer who assumes it will misread this page in the opposite direction. The only reliable move is to read the term, not to pattern-match it.
The clauses that decide what the price actually costs you
A rate you can leave is a different product from a rate you cannot. These terms rarely appear in a comparison table and often matter more than the figure.
- Renewal at the prevailing rate. IBM SPSS states that subscriptions renew at the then current price at the end of the first year. This is standard and it is fine, but it means the price you agreed is explicitly not the price you are agreeing to for year two.
- No mid-term cancellation. Tinder states that no cancellation of the current subscription is allowed during the active subscription period. On a monthly plan that is a month. On an annual one it is a year.
- Cancellation effective at period end. Raya's cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period rather than on the day you ask. Common, and worth knowing before you count on a refund.
- Trial forfeiture. FamilyWall states that subscribing forfeits the unused portion of a 30 day trial. Upgrading early is therefore not free, which is the opposite of what an upgrade prompt during a trial implies.
- Retention conditions on a headline offer. Robinhood's 3% IRA match requires holding Gold for a year and keeping the assets five years. The match is real; it is also a five year commitment described as a percentage.
- Inactivity fees. Skrill charges a 5 euro monthly inactivity fee. A dormant account is not a free account.
The unit is often not a user, and that is where budgets break
Adjacent to promotional pricing, and found in the same sweep, is a pattern that distorts cost estimates more severely than any discount: metering on a unit that is not a seat.
A team budgeting on "$X per user" against a product that does not charge per user will be wrong by a multiple, not by a margin.
- Komoot sells offline maps per geographic region. One region is free; the World Pack is 29.99 euro.
- eWebinar sets your tier automatically by how many webinars are live. Level 3 caps at fifteen, and each one beyond that is $15 a month.
- Puppet bands by managed node.
- Zuddl combines organiser seats with annual attendee volume.
- SalonUltimate charges $199 per location per month, plus three cents per SMS over the allowance.
- SentinelOne runs $179.99 to $229.99 per endpoint per year, with the top tier quote only.
- Wave PLM publishes minimum seat counts: Starter is ten users at $120 each per month annually, Professional fifty at $100. The floor, not the per-seat rate, is the entry price.
Cloud free tiers deserve their own note, because "free" is doing less work than it appears. Google Cloud's free e2-micro exists only in three US regions and its free storage only in US regions. Oracle's Always Free NoSQL is Phoenix only. Azure bars its twelve month free tier from pay-as-you-go signups in China and India. These are region locks, not merely time limits, and they decide whether a free tier is usable at all.
How to check any vendor in about four minutes
None of this requires special access. It requires reading the page twice.
- Find the second number. On the pricing page, look for a smaller figure near the headline rate, an asterisk, or the words "for the first". If there is a revert price, it is almost always within two lines of the promotional one.
- Read what the discount excludes. Add-ons and payment processing fees are the two most commonly carved out, and they are frequently the larger part of a real invoice.
- Find the metering unit. Per user, per node, per location, per device, per region, per event. If it is not per user, rebuild your estimate before going further.
- Read the renewal sentence. Search the terms for "renew". You are looking for whether renewal is at the current price or the then current price.
- Read the cancellation sentence. Whether you can leave mid-term, and whether cancelling ends access immediately or at period end.
- For a consumer app, read the app store listing. Subscription terms, renewal rules and tier caps are stated there in a way marketing sites frequently do not, because the store requires it.
- Write both numbers and the revert date into your renewal reminder on the day you subscribe. This is the single highest-value minute in the process, because it is the only moment both figures are in front of you.
Entry price, billing model and what each tier excludes, for every product in the catalogue.
What we could not verify, and why that is in the article
A piece about pricing transparency that hid its own gaps would be a poor advertisement for the idea.
Several products were checked and deliberately left out. One vendor's pricing page returned two contradictory figures for the same plan, $1,140 against $198 a year, so nothing from that page was recorded. Another's most quoted figure turned out to come from a customer review rather than vendor copy, which is hearsay about evidence. A third publishes tiers whose prices appear only after a sales conversation, which is legitimate and simply not a number we can print.
Whole categories publish nothing checkable at all. Government and public sector, aviation primes, mining, automotive dealer software and the ERP majors between them account for hundreds of products with no public pricing page. That is worth stating plainly rather than filling with estimates: where this catalogue says pricing is not published, it means the pricing page was read and there was no figure on it.
Questions people ask
- Is promotional pricing that reverts legal or deceptive?
Legal, and in every case in this article, disclosed. Each figure here was taken from the vendor’s own published page or app store listing. The issue is not concealment, it is that the disclosure sits where a buyer reads it once, while the reversion arrives months later when the comparison has been forgotten.
- How do I find out what my current subscription reverts to?
Check your original order confirmation email first, since it usually names the term. Failing that, the vendor’s current pricing page will show the standard rate, and the billing section of your account will show your next charge date. If a discount has an end date, the account area is normally where it is stated.
- Why do some products cost more in the first year?
Because implementation is front loaded. Practice-Web charges $179 a month for twelve months and $129 after, which reflects the real cost of getting a dental practice running on new software. It is a useful reminder that "the price goes up later" is a pattern, not a law.
- Does an app store listing count as a reliable source for pricing?
For subscription terms, tier limits and renewal rules, yes: the listing is the vendor’s own copy and the store requires those terms to be stated. It is frequently the only readable source for consumer apps, whose marketing sites often render prices in a way that cannot be read from the page source. Editorial descriptions and rankings in a store listing are a different matter and are not used here.
- What is the single most useful thing to check before subscribing?
The metering unit. A wrong assumption about a discount costs a percentage; a wrong assumption about whether billing is per user, per node, per location or per device costs a multiple. Establish what you are being charged for before you compare what you are being charged.
Sources
Every price, limit and date above was checked against these pages on the day shown. Where a figure has since moved, the vendor’s own page is the authority and this one is a snapshot.
- 1Public Cloud pricing · OVHcloudPricing table carries a column headed "Price on April 1, 2026".Checked
- 2Pricing plans · Xero90% off for six months, reverting to $25, $55 and $90; add-ons and payment fees excluded; prices rise from 1 October 2026.Checked
- 3Pricing · StyleSeat$19 per month for three months, reverting to $35.Checked
- 4Webinar pricing · RingCentralWebinar 500 discount lasts one year, then $75 per host per month.Checked
- 5SPSS Statistics pricing · IBMSubscriptions renew at the then current price at the end of the first year.Checked
- 6Pricing · SentinelOne$179.99 to $229.99 per endpoint per year; top tier quote only.Checked
- 7Maps and pricing · KomootSold per geographic region; first region free, World Pack 29.99 euro.Checked
- 8Free tier · Google CloudFree e2-micro limited to us-west1, us-central1 and us-east1; free storage US regions only.Checked
- 9Free account · Microsoft AzureTwelve month free tier unavailable to pay-as-you-go signups in China and India.Checked
- 10Retirement · Robinhood3% IRA match requires Gold for one year and assets held five years.Checked