- Headline per-user prices understate the real cost, because the count that matters is everyone who must complete a step, not everyone who manages the work.
- Price the process, not the tool: participants, managers, sites and the year-two number after the pilot expands.
- RakuOps charges per site: Free for one site, $99 for three, $499 for ten, $799 for unlimited, with users and participants free and unlimited on every plan.
Write both numbers down first. Under per-seat pricing the first number is the bill; under participant-free pricing only the second one is. That single distinction usually changes the total by an order of magnitude on a frontline rollout.
The four cost models you will meet
- Per user, per month. The most common. Fine for desk teams, punishing when hundreds of people each complete one check a day.
- Per site or per location. Predictable for multi-site retail and hospitality, and expensive if some sites are tiny.
- Per submission or per form. Cheap in a pilot, unpredictable once adoption succeeds, which punishes exactly the outcome you wanted.
- Per administrator, participants free. You pay for the number of sites you run; users and everyone completing a task are free. This is the RakuOps model.
The costs that are not on the pricing page
- Implementation and template building, sometimes a separate fee, often several weeks of someone's time.
- Training, which scales with how much the tool demands of frontline staff. Anything requiring an install and a login costs more here than a link does.
- Devices. Shared tablets are often bought to avoid per-seat costs, then undermine attribution and need replacing.
- Year two. Pilots are priced for one site and one process. Expansion is where per-seat models bite.
- Exit. Getting your records out in a usable form if you leave.
A worked example
A manufacturer with three sites, 180 operators and 9 supervisors and quality staff. Under per-seat pricing at a typical rate, covering everyone who completes a daily check runs into thousands a month, so most buyers licence only the supervisors and leave the operators on paper. Under participant-free pricing the same rollout is priced on 9 people, and everyone on the floor is covered from day one.
Questions to ask any vendor
- Does every person completing a task need a paid licence?
- What happens to the price when we double the number of people completing checks?
- Is any feature gated to a higher tier, or is the difference only how many sites you run?
- What is the implementation fee, and is template building included?
- Can we export every run, answer, photo and timestamp ourselves?
What RakuOps costs
Free for one site, Starter $99 a month for three sites, Growth $499 for ten sites, Pro $799 for unlimited sites. Users are unlimited on every plan. Annual billing gives two months free. Every plan includes every feature: unlimited workflows, scheduling, automations, forms, approvals, dashboards, integrations, API and AI. Anyone completing a task from a link is free and never counted.