Why We Chose Pay-as-You-Go Pricing

When we started building our products, the obvious pricing move was a monthly subscription. It is what every SaaS company does. Predictable revenue, easy to model, familiar to investors.

We went a different direction.

The subscription problem in Tanzania

A monthly subscription assumes the user has consistent, predictable usage. It assumes they will use the product every month, at roughly the same level, indefinitely.

That is not how most businesses here work.

A law firm in Arusha might process a hundred contracts in one month and almost none the next. A hotel in Zanzibar might need its booking widget heavily during peak season and barely at all during the quiet months. An SME might use document AI intensively during tax season and not touch it otherwise.

Forcing those users onto a monthly seat fee means they pay for months they barely use the product. That is bad for them, and it is the kind of friction that kills adoption.

Pay as you go

Our products use credit-based and usage-based pricing. You pay when you use them. If you do not use them for a month, you do not pay. Your credits do not expire. There are no seat minimums.

This applies across Ubunifu Insight (document AI), and will carry through to Ubunifu Rafiki (website widgets) when it launches.

For businesses with variable workloads and seasonal patterns, this is the only model that makes sense.

A secondary benefit: trust

Pay-as-you-go is also an honesty signal. It says: we are confident you will find value in this, so we are not locking you into a contract to guarantee your money.

If our products stop being useful to you, you stop paying. That is the right relationship between a company and its users.

We think more software companies building for African markets should work this way, where cash flow is unpredictable and trust is earned, not assumed.