SimScale is a modern cloud SaaS product, and the buying experience should feel like one.
Right now, having to contact sales just to understand pricing, upgrade, or access more capacity creates unnecessary friction. For many of us, that is not a minor inconvenience. It is a blocker.
I am an engineer trying to get work done. If I hit a limit, need more core hours, need a higher tier, or want to try a paid feature, I should be able to click a button, see the price, pay, and keep working. I should not have to schedule a call, wait for a response, explain my use case, negotiate, or get routed through a sales process for something that should be a self-serve transaction.
This is especially frustrating because simulation work is often iterative and time-sensitive. You run a model, hit a limitation, realize you need more capacity, and want to keep moving. A forced sales interaction breaks that workflow at exactly the wrong moment.
The current model also makes SimScale harder to evaluate. Transparent pricing and instant upgrades build trust. Hidden pricing and “contact sales” create uncertainty. They make users wonder:
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What will this actually cost?
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Am I about to get pushed into an enterprise plan?
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Will the price depend on who I talk to?
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How long will it take before I can continue my work?
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Is this product really designed for individual engineers and small teams, or only for enterprise procurement?
For modern SaaS, this feels badly outdated. I understand that large enterprise customers may need custom contracts, invoicing, procurement support, security reviews, and account management. That is fine. Keep a sales-assisted path for those customers.
But that should not be the only path.
What I would strongly like to see is:
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Public pricing for standard plans
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A self-serve upgrade button inside the product
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Pay-as-you-go purchasing for additional simulation capacity
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Clear visibility into usage, limits, and overage costs
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Instant access after payment
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Enterprise sales available only when the customer actually needs enterprise support
This would make SimScale more useful, not less. It would remove friction for engineers, hobbyists, startups, small manufacturers, consultants, and teams that do not want to enter a sales funnel just to run simulations.
I do not think this is a small UX preference. I think it is a fundamental product access issue. If a user is ready to pay, the product should not put a salesperson between the user and the software.
Please consider making pricing, upgrades, and additional usage self-serve. SimScale is a cloud-native engineering tool. The purchasing experience should match that.