Annual Contract
You commit to the subscription for a full year. Often required for the lowest advertised price. Be careful with auto-renewal clauses — many contracts renew automatically unless you cancel 30-90 days before the end date.
Credit-Based Pricing
You purchase a pool of credits and spend them as you use the product — each export, lookup, or action consumes credits. Credits often expire monthly with no rollover, meaning unused credits are lost. Check whether different actions cost different credit amounts, as this can make true cost hard to predict.
Data Enrichment
The process of appending additional information to existing records — adding phone numbers to a contact list, or firmographic data to a company record. Enrichment tools pull from proprietary databases or aggregate multiple sources.
Flat-Rate Pricing
One fixed price for access to the product, regardless of how many users or how much you use it. Simple to budget for, but often comes with usage caps or export limits buried in the fine print.
Free Plan
A permanently free tier with limited features or usage. Different from a free trial — there's no expiration date. Free plans are often used as lead generation tools and may have significant limitations that push you toward paid tiers.
Free Trial
Temporary access to a paid plan, usually 7-30 days. Lets you evaluate the full product before committing. Some trials require a credit card upfront and auto-convert to paid if you don't cancel.
Firmographics
Descriptive attributes of a company — industry, employee count, revenue, location, technology stack. The B2B equivalent of demographics. Used to filter prospecting lists and define ideal customer profiles.
Intent Data
Signals that indicate a company or person is actively researching a topic or category — typically derived from web browsing behavior, content consumption, or search activity. Used to prioritize outreach toward buyers who are in-market right now.
Minimum Commitment
A floor on what you must spend or how many seats/credits you must purchase, regardless of actual usage. Common in enterprise contracts. A tool with a $500/month minimum is not a $500/month tool for a team that only needs $200 worth of value.
Overage Fee
A charge applied when you exceed the limits of your plan — extra exports, API calls, seats, or contacts. Overage rates are often significantly higher per unit than your base plan rate, so it's worth knowing the ceiling before you hit it.
Per-Seat Pricing
You pay a fixed monthly fee for each user who accesses the software. The total cost scales directly with your team size. Common in CRM and sales tools — watch for minimums that force you to buy more seats than you need.
Quote-Only Pricing
No published pricing — you must contact sales to get a number. Common with enterprise software. Prices are negotiable but the process is slow, and you have no baseline to negotiate from without doing your homework first.
Technographics
Data about the technology a company uses — which CRM, marketing automation, cloud provider, etc. Useful for targeting companies that use complementary tools or are likely candidates to switch from a competitor.
Usage-Based Pricing
Your bill is determined by how much you actually use the product — API calls, records processed, emails sent, etc. Costs can be unpredictable month to month, especially during growth phases or one-off campaigns.