We Killed Per-Seat Pricing. Here’s What Your Team Saves

Per-seat pricing looks harmless on a pricing page. You see a small number next to a single user icon, and it feels affordable. But that number is not your bill. Your bill is that number multiplied by every person you hire, every contractor you bring in, and every client you want to loop into a project. So we removed it. Orangescrum charges one flat monthly rate, and every plan includes unlimited users and unlimited tasks. This post shows you exactly what that changes, in dollars.

What Per-Seat Pricing Actually Costs You

Most project management tools charge somewhere between $10 and $20 per user per month on their paid tiers. Individually, that is easy to approve. Collectively, it becomes a line item that grows every time your company does well. Here is the same team size priced both ways. The per-seat column assumes a modest $12 per user per month. The flat-rate column assumes the Orangescrum cloud plan at $29 per month.

Team size	Per-seat tool (annual)	Orangescrum flat rate (annual)	You keep
10 people	$1,440	$348	$1,092
25 people	$3,600	$348	$3,252
50 people	$7,200	$348	$6,852
100 people	$14,400	$348	$14,052
250 people	$36,000	$348	$35,652

Notice what happens to the middle column as you scroll down. It doubles, then doubles again. The flat-rate column simply does not move. That is the entire argument in one table.

The Hidden Costs Nobody Puts in the Spreadsheet

The subscription total is only the visible part. Per-seat billing also changes how your team behaves, and those behaviours cost real money.

1. Seat rationing

When every login has a price tag, someone has to decide who gets one. Your finance lead gets read-only access. Your QA contractor works from screenshots. Your client asks for status by email. As a result, the tool that was supposed to centralise work now holds only part of the picture.

2. Shadow spreadsheets

People who cannot get a seat do not stop working. They open a spreadsheet instead. Now you are maintaining two sources of truth, and the one without permissions is usually the one that is out of date.

3. Licence admin overhead

Someone has to add seats, remove seats, and reconcile the invoice every month. SaaS management studies consistently report that a large share of paid licences sit unused, because deprovisioning is nobody’s favourite task. You pay for those forgotten seats until somebody notices.

4. Growth penalties

Hiring should be good news. Under per-seat pricing, every offer letter quietly raises your software bill, and every seasonal spike means a renegotiation. Budget approval becomes a tax on momentum.

How Flat-Rate Pricing Works at Orangescrum

Our model is deliberately boring, because pricing should be the easiest thing you understand about a tool.

• • Cloud plans start at $29 per month and scale up through $69 and $349 per month.

• • Self-hosted starts at $1,500 per year

• • Every plan includes unlimited users and unlimited tasks.

• • Adding a person costs nothing. Invite your whole team, your contractors, and your clients on day one.

You choose a plan based on the capabilities you need, not on how many people you are allowed to invite. That is the only difference in how you shop for it.

What Teams Do Differently When Seats Stop Costing Money

This is the part that surprises people. Removing per-seat pricing does not just lower a bill. It changes what your project data looks like. Teams invite everyone who touches the work. Stakeholders follow progress themselves instead of asking for updates, especially with Watchers, which lets anyone subscribe to a task or story without being assigned to it. Status meetings get shorter, because the status is already visible. Clients get their own access rather than a weekly PDF. Contractors log time in the same place as employees, so your reporting is complete for the first time. And because nobody is rationing logins, the tool actually reflects reality.

What You Get on Every Plan

Flat pricing would be a poor trade if the product were thin. It is not. Orangescrum ships the capabilities teams evaluate us for, including:

• • AI Chat and MCP Server – ask questions of your project data and connect Orangescrum to AI assistants.

• • Watchers – follow tasks and stories without being assigned.

• • Checklist Framework – repeatable steps inside any task.

• • Scaled Agile – epics, stories, and sprints for multi-team delivery.

• • Version and Release Management – tie work to what actually shipped.

• • Outlook Plugin – turn email into tasks without switching tabs.

• • Custom Labels – organize work in your team’s own vocabulary.

• • Public API – available on self-hosted deployments.

Moving from Jira? We handle the migration for you, free of charge, and your history comes with you.

Is Flat Rate Always Cheaper?

Honest answer: not always. If you are a three-person team on a competitor’s free tier, free still wins on price. Per-seat pricing hurts least when your headcount is tiny and stable. The moment you cross roughly six to eight paid users, though, the math flips and never flips back. And if you expect to grow, hire contractors, or share projects with clients, flat rate wins earlier and by a wider margin every year.

The Bottom Line

Per-seat pricing charges you for access. Flat-rate pricing charges you for the product. We think the second model is the honest one, because your project management tool should get more valuable as more people use it, not more expensive. Run your own numbers. Multiply your headcount by your current per-user rate, then compare it to a single flat monthly figure. The gap is usually larger than people expect.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is per-seat pricing?

Per-seat pricing charges a fixed fee for each individual user on an account. Your total bill is the per-user rate multiplied by your number of licensed users, so the cost rises every time you add someone.

Does Orangescrum really allow unlimited users on every plan?

Yes. Every Orangescrum plan, cloud and self-hosted, includes unlimited users and unlimited tasks. Your monthly or annual rate stays the same whether you invite 5 people or 500.

How much does Orangescrum cost?

Cloud plans start at $29 per month and scale through $69 and $349 per month. Self-hosted plans start at $1,500 per year.

At what team size does flat-rate pricing become cheaper?

For most teams the crossover happens between six and eight paid users. Below that, a small per-seat plan can be comparable. Above it, flat-rate pricing pulls ahead and the gap widens with every hire.

Can I move from Jira to Orangescrum without losing data?

Yes. Orangescrum offers free Jira migration, and your projects, issues, and history transfer across so your team keeps its context.

Are contractors and clients counted as users?

No, because nobody is counted. Contractors, clients, and stakeholders can all be invited at no additional cost, which is the point of removing per-seat pricing.