When we designed Helium's pricing model, we faced the same choice every SaaS company faces: gate features to create upgrade pressure, or include everything and let usage drive pricing. We chose the latter, and it's become one of our strongest competitive advantages.
The problem with feature-gating is that it punishes small businesses. A startup processing 500 orders per month needs manufacturing MRP just as much as a company processing 50,000. They need compliance documentation, they need accounting, they need analytics. Telling them they can't have these tools until they pay 5x more doesn't make business sense — it makes their operations worse.
Our model is simple: every customer gets every module. The only differences between tiers are usage limits — orders per month, team members, storage, and API calls. A £99/month Starter customer gets the same Nucleus AI, the same native accounting, the same manufacturing MRP as an Enterprise customer. As your business grows, you upgrade to handle more volume, not to unlock features you needed from day one.