At engageSPARK we are constantly looking for ways to serve you, our customers, better—all the while building a sustainable business. One of the bigger decisions we made early on was to go with a pure pay-as-you-go model. That was in 2014, and the SaaS world has been changing: Subscription plans have become the norm.

Today, we’re announcing that we will be introducing subscription plans to the engageSPARK platform. These usage-based plans will allow us to focus our support efforts better while extending our easy-to-use, world-wide communication platform.

Because we are adding subscription plans we will also be able to lower our usage pricing for SMS, voice minutes, WhatsApp messages, and Airtime top-ups to be even more competitive.

Let’s look a bit deeper at how the engageSPARK subscription plans will work, and how they affect existing customers.

How do plans work?

The engageSPARK subscription plans will be usage-based. Depending on your usage, you’ll be charged a monthly fee.

If you interact with a couple of hundred people a month, a basic plan is probably your best choice. If you regularly launch surveys to tens of thousands of people, a more powerful plan may be appropriate.

Keep reading to learn how to choose the right plan for you. Or just have a look at the available plans.

Looking to get an even better deal? Get a discount of up to 30% if you choose annual billing. And yes, there is still a free testing plan so you can explore the platform at your leisure.

What happens to existing accounts?

Right now, subscription plans are in internal beta. Until they are publicly available, nothing changes for existing customers. We expect them to be ready at the beginning of December.

Once plans are available, we’ll help you choose the plan that is right for your usage and needs. All existing customers will have several months to upgrade to a plan.

Afterward, if you have not upgraded, you will be automatically subscribed to the free Testing plan. The Testing plan is free and restricted to 50 Monthly Active Contacts. Please also note the limited data retention of the Testing plan.

We know this is a big change—please reach out to us for any questions or concerns. We’re looking forward to helping you choose the right plan.

Curious about which plan will be best for you? The next section explains how you can find out.

Which plan is right for you?

You will be able to choose one of nine plans. Which one is best for you? That depends largely on your usage: how many contacts (phone numbers) do you interact with in a month’s time?

We call this number “Monthly Active Contacts” and each plan includes a certain number of those.

What does it mean to interact with a contact? Any of the following:

• Sending or receiving an SMS
• Making or receiving a voice call or missed call
• Sending or receiving a WhatsApp or Telegram message
• Sending an airtime top-up (prepaid mobile credit)

For example, if you regularly send SMS to 800 customers in a given month, then the Starter plan for $25 / mo on annual billing is right for you.

If you are doing major Voice IVR Surveys where you interact with, for example, 50,000 people regularly and send a further 10,000 people confirmation SMS, then the Organization plan ($299 / mo with annual billing) may be right for you.

To help you understand how many contacts you interact with usually, we’re currently adding a dashboard that will show you this number for the previous month. That way you can make an informed decision on which plan to choose.

Note that if you exceed the Monthly Active Contacts of your plan, we will not prevent messages from going out. Instead, we’ll automatically add a Contact Add-on for $25 to your account, which gives you another 1,000 contacts to interact with.

To learn more about Monthly Active Contacts and plans, please read the support article Monthly Active Contacts.

Other criteria to choose a plan

Monthly Active Contacts will likely determine which plan you choose. Still, it’s important to also look at the other properties that change depending on your plan.

First, data retention: How long do you need us to keep your old campaigns, your campaign reports, and your old messages and call data around? Depending on the plan you’re on, we will clean up old data after a certain period.

For example, with the basic Starter plan, we’ll clean up messages and reports after 2 months, and remove old, unused campaigns after 4 months.

Second, support: All plans include support via e-mail and webchat. For more advanced plans, we can offer more: We support you using video calls or even create a dedicated WhatsApp or Viber chat group.

Lastly, do you need advanced features such as WhatsApp Surveys or User Management? Typically only needed by larger organizations, these will be available in the more advanced plans.

Read more about the plans we’re offering you

Head over to the Subscription Plans page to see what plan is best for you!

As always, if you have questions or concerns, please reach out to us via HelpTeam@engageSPARK.com or through our live chat facility on the website. We look forward to helping you.