Per-Client Pricing
Also known as: per client fee, per site pricing, price per client
A price that goes up every time you add a client. Ten clients cost more than five, and fifty cost more than ten.
Per-client pricing means a tool charges you again for each client you add. A new client means a bigger bill.
At five clients it feels fair. At fifty it feels like rent. A reporting tool that charges $20 per client, billed yearly, costs $100 a month at 5 clients, $400 at 20 and $1,000 at 50. That was the price on the vendor's page on 20 October 2026.
The price of the tool is not the problem. The problem is that the bill grows at the same speed as your client list, so adding a client never makes the work cheaper.
Per-client pricing is not always a bad deal. If each client pays you more than the tool costs for that client, the tool is just a cost of doing business, and it goes away when the client does. To check, divide the monthly bill by the number of clients and compare it with the monthly fee you charge each one.
A per-site licence is a close cousin. You pay once for each site, and not again, so the total still grows with your client list, but the monthly bill does not. The cost article puts both side by side at 5, 20, 50 and 100 clients.