Your current pricing model at the beginning vs what it could be with fixed pricing at the end.
Feature flags (or feature toggles) have become an indispensable tool for modern software development teams. They allow you to decouple deployment from release, test features in production safely, perform gradual rollouts, and quickly disable problematic code without a full rollback. In short, they give you control and reduce risk.
But as teams embrace feature flagging, a common frustration often emerges: unpredictable and escalating costs. Many feature flagging tools employ variable pricing models – charging per flag, per user seat, per monthly active user (MAU), or based on evaluation volume. While these might seem reasonable initially, they carry hidden risks for your budget.
The Problem: Variable Pricing and the Fear of Scaling
Imagine this: your team starts small with feature flags. A few key toggles here and there. The cost is manageable. But as your product grows, so does your reliance on flags. You want to A/B test more, run more canary releases, put more operational toggles in place for safety. Suddenly, that per-toggle or per-MAU cost starts climbing.
This leads to uncomfortable situations:
- Bill Shock: The invoice arrives, and it’s significantly higher than anticipated because usage spiked or you crossed some arbitrary threshold.
- Budget Anxiety: Finance teams struggle to forecast costs accurately when they depend on unpredictable usage patterns.
- The “Flag Tax”: Developers might hesitate to create new flags for smaller features or internal experiments, fearing they’ll push the cost up. This stifles innovation and the full adoption of best practices.
- Administrative Overhead: Tracking usage, reconciling invoices against complex pricing tiers, and justifying fluctuating costs takes valuable time away from engineering and product development. It adds a layer of management complexity that many teams simply don’t need.
When your pricing model penalises you for using a tool more effectively, something is wrong.
The Scenario: When Costs Spiral
Consider a SaaS company experiencing rapid growth. They initially used a feature flag tool charging per MAU and per toggle. As their user base expanded and their development velocity increased, their feature flag bill tripled in six months. They found themselves in painful budget meetings discussing which valuable flags they could consolidate or remove, not because the flags weren’t useful, but purely to manage the spiraling costs. Their tool, meant to enable speed and safety, had become a budgetary bottleneck.
The Solution: Predictability Through Fixed Pricing
There’s a simpler, smarter way: fixed pricing. With a fixed-price model, you pay one predictable amount, regardless of how many flags you create, how many users you have, or how many evaluations occur.
Quick note: Whilst the service is unlimited, if you have ridiculously significant usage, let’s chat to make sure the platform isn’t degraded or at risk for others.
The benefits are immediate:
- Gain Budget Certainty: Know exactly what you’ll pay each month or year. Eliminate surprises and complex calculations, making forecasting trivial.
- Reduced Overhead: Forget tracking usage metrics for billing purposes. Your finance team gets a simple, predictable expense.
- Freedom to Innovate: Developers can use flags freely whenever appropriate, without worrying about incremental costs. Want to wrap a small refactor in a flag? Go for it. A/B test a button color? Easy. This encourages best practices and experimentation.
- Focus on Value: You’re paying for the capability – the control, the safety, the speed – not counting beans (or flags).
A Smarter Way Forward with RocketFlag
I built RocketFlag precisely because I’ve experienced the frustrations of variable pricing firsthand and believe there’s a better way to empower teams. I believe feature flagging should be an accessible, predictable part of your toolkit, not a source of budget anxiety.
That’s why RocketFlag offers straightforward, fixed pricing. You get all the power of feature flags – unlimited flags, environments, and team members (on paid plans) – for one simple, affordable price. No counting toggles, no MAU limits driving up your costs.
Just starting? RocketFlag’s generous free tier lets you experience the core benefits without any commitment. Scaling up or have a team? The paid plans offer predictable, flat-rate pricing that won’t break the bank as you grow. You can easily book a demo to see how it fits your team’s workflow.
Conclusion: Innovate, Don’t Invoice-Watch
If you take away anything from this post, it’s that feature flags are powerful enablers and that your pricing model shouldn’t hold you back from leveraging them fully. Fixed pricing removes the financial friction and administrative burden, allowing your team to focus on what truly matters: building and shipping great software faster and more safely. Stop paying per toggle; embrace the predictability and freedom of fixed pricing to truly unlock the power of feature flagging.