The entire system is broken.
Not one piece of it. The whole thing.
Tiers are broken. You need one feature from the next plan up, so you upgrade the whole thing. The marginal cost to the vendor: a database flag. The cost to you: $20/month more.
Per-seat pricing is broken. You have 10 people on your team. Three use the tool daily. Seven log in once a month. You pay for 10 seats.
Credit systems are broken. You buy 1,000 credits. You use 200. The rest expire at the end of the month. You buy 1,000 more.
Feature gating is broken. The software can do the thing. The code is already running. They just won't let you use it unless you pay for a higher tier.
Annual contracts are broken. You sign up for a year because the monthly price is 40% higher. Then they raise the price at renewal and auto-charge your card.
"Contact sales for pricing" is broken. It means the price is whatever they think you'll pay. Same product, different price, based on how big your company looks.
The enterprise tier that costs 10x for a database flag is broken. SSO, audit logs, custom roles — features that cost nothing to serve, gated behind a price that exists because enterprises will pay it.
The free trial that asks for your credit card is broken. It exists to create a subscription you'll forget to cancel.
Every layer of abstraction between "what it costs to serve you" and "what you pay" exists to hide the gap.
The numbers.
SaaS pricing increase in 2025.
Inflation was 2.7%. That's a 4x gap.
Of SaaS revenue growth came from price increases on existing customers.
Not new customers. Not better features. Price increases.
Average monthly subscription spend per person across 12 tools.
$3,276/year. Infrastructure cost of the same tools: ~$31/month.
Markup on DocuSign's Personal plan.
An e-signature costs $0.02 to process. They charge $10/month for 5.
Of SaaS spend is wasted on unused or underutilized tools.
You're paying for software you don't use. By design.
How we got here.
The subscription model made sense in 2008. Software used to cost $500 upfront. Monthly billing made it accessible. That was a genuine improvement.
Then the model rotted.
Infrastructure costs dropped 10x over the past decade. Cloud storage, compute, email delivery — cheaper than they've ever been. A tool that cost $5/month to serve in 2015 costs $0.50 in 2026.
Subscription prices went up. 11.4% in 2025. 72% of revenue growth from price hikes, not new customers. The gap between what tools cost to run and what they charge isn't shrinking. It's widening. In both directions.
The subscription model is now what the perpetual license was before it: an extraction mechanism that benefits the vendor at the customer's expense.
The playbook, every time:
Fair is the replacement.
Not a cheaper version of the same system. A different system.
Every Fair product charges infrastructure cost plus a small margin. We publish the costs. You see exactly what each action costs us, what our margin is, and what you pay.
Full pro features from the first use. No tiers. No plans. No feature gating. No per-seat pricing. No annual contracts. No "contact sales." No enterprise tier for a database flag.
The old system
Need a 3rd signature?
$10/month
Fair
Need a 3rd signature?
$1-2
The old system
Your 501st contact?
$13/month
Fair
Send 500 emails?
$0.50
The old system
A 4th social channel?
$99/month
Fair
Publish 30 posts?
$3
The old system
Nothing this month?
Still charged
Fair
Nothing this month?
$0
We show you the receipt.
This is what a single e-signature actually costs to deliver. Every Fair product publishes this breakdown.
DocuSign charges $10/month for 5 envelopes. That's $2 per envelope.
Infrastructure cost: $0.04. Their markup: 50x.
Our markup: 1.25x.
The thesis.
This isn't "here's a cheaper tool." That's commodity positioning. Anyone can undercut a price.
The thesis is: the system is broken and we're building the replacement.
One account. One wallet. 13 products today, more coming. Every product charges cost plus a small margin. Every product publishes the cost breakdown. Every product gives you full features from the first use.
Light month? Small bill. Quiet month? $0. Your credits never expire. There is nothing to cancel.
We don't value-price. We cost-price. The price is the cost plus our margin. We publish both. That's it.
| Broken | Fair |
|---|---|
| Tiers with feature gating | Full features from the first use |
| Per-seat pricing | Pay per action, unlimited users |
| Credits that expire monthly | Real dollars. Never expire. |
| Annual contracts | No contracts. No commitment. Ever. |
| "Contact sales" pricing | Published prices. Same for everyone. |
| Enterprise tier for SSO | SSO included. It's a database flag. |
| Free trial with credit card | Free actions on signup. No card. |
| Auto-renewal traps | Nothing to renew. Nothing to cancel. |
| Hidden infrastructure costs | Published cost breakdown on every receipt |
We're building the replacement.
13 products. One is live. The rest are building. We publish everything — costs, decisions, progress, failures. You can watch us build in public, or you can try what's ready.