Introducing Multi-Attribute Rating


It is now possible to bill for consumption of your service at different rates based on the attributes in your events data. Multi-Attribute Rating allows you to dynamically create segments from your events and define targeted pricing for each segment, leading to increased price flexibility and invoice clarity while preventing catalog bloat.

Consumption-based services face unique pricing challenges around rating access to their service. Both the cost to the provider and the value to the consumer vary depending on many factors. Powerful compute servers cost more than standard ones. Text messages and phone calls to France cost more than ones to the United States. Historically, providers have needed to track these factors on their side and map them to a bloated pricing catalog on the billing system side. But now, with Chargify's Multi-Attribute Rating, providers simply tag their event data with these factors and define multiple rates — as many as needed — for their combinations of attributes. Chargify does the rest - we select the appropriate rate for every event and produce an invoice that is concise, accurate, and easy to read.

Imagine a ‘Cloud Server’ company that offers multiple sizes of servers to their customers. Each server is billed based on the hourly consumption, with higher rates for the larger servers. Previously, to charge for each size server at its own rate, Cloud Serve would need to create multiple components (one for each size) and report usage separately for each size. With Multi-Attribute Rating, Cloud Serve creates a single Events-Based Component, based on the ‘Server Hours’ data stream and metric, and varies the price based on the ‘Server Size’ attribute. Taking it a step further, Cloud Serve can even vary the price based on another attribute, such as location, time of day used, day of week used, etc. For example, a server in the EU may cost more than a server of the same size in the US. This is configured by simply adding a new rate for the attribute combination and not by creating a component for every size and location pair.

With Multi-Attribute Rating, your flexibility of rating based on the true value your product  provides is even easier. You can now provide very specific pricing, varying on attributes, while maintaining a consistent and easy-to-manage product catalog.

With this very powerful pricing model, it is equally as important to ensure your customers understand their invoices. When Multi-Attribute Based charges are included on an invoice, the invoice template has been updated to clearly outline how your customers are being charged and the value you are providing. A new “Usage Details” section will appear at the bottom of the invoice, clearly detailing both the amount consumed and the unique price for each applied rate. Your customers will clearly see what they were charged and why, even in complex billing scenarios.

To learn how to start using Multi-Attribute based rating, please contact Chargify Support your your Customer Success Manager.

Learn more in our documentation >