We at CrewBrain have recently started offering two different pricing models for different usage scenarios. Find out what this is all about and how you can save costs in your personnel planning in this blog article.
The definitions
- Named User: Any person who is granted access and can receive notifications—e.g., internal employees or freelancers. Named Users are usually counted per license.
- Planned Users: Individuals who were scheduled for jobs in a month or for whom working hours were recorded. This is also counted if a service provider sends 10 people to a job, for example—that’s 10 Planned Users. Billing is based on an average over several months; short-term overruns are thus balanced out. There is a minimum purchase (for CrewBrain: minimum number of Planned Users).
How does this affect costs and administration?
- Named user model: Costs are based on active accounts. Easy to calculate if you have a stable team (e.g., permanent employees, regularly recurring freelancers). For a large number of named users, sliding-scale prices apply, so that the costs per additional user decrease.
- Planned user model: More flexible for agencies/employment agencies with highly fluctuating workloads—you primarily pay for the people who actually work on jobs. Often cheaper for companies with many temporary workers, partly because we calculate an average over several months. However, there is a minimum average of 40 users.
Advantages and disadvantages
Named Users
- Every person who has access to the system counts.
- Even those who “only” want to receive email notifications need access.
- We offer volume discounts for large numbers of users.
Planned Users
- We count how many people you schedule per month or how many people you record working hours for.
- An average calculation smooths out peaks in individual months.
- Minimum number of 40 planned persons per month.
When should you choose which model?
Select Named Users if you…
- …have a small to medium-sized, stable core team that uses the system regularly,
- …requires many internal employees with their own logins, time tracking, and profiles.
Select Planned Users if you…
- …have many short-term, project-related bookings (subcontractors, large crews only on individual days),
- …seasonal fluctuations are significant and you would prefer to pay only for the heads you actually plan to use.
Quick checklist before making a decision
- How many people need permanent logins and profiles, for example to receive notifications?
- How much does your staffing capacity fluctuate over the course of the year?
- Arbeitet ihr viel mit Subunternehmern, die ihr nur saisonal hinzubucht?
Our price calculator
Ultimately, there is no clear recommendation or guideline as to which model is better or cheaper for you. It always depends on the individual case. In general, however, it can be said that the more your utilization fluctuates over the year, the more interesting the Planned User Model will be for you. The more homogeneous your utilization is, the cheaper it will be for you to use Named Users.
But you can easily try it out for yourself and play around with the different options. Our price calculator provides you with a good overview and compares all tariff options openly and transparently.
