Hornbill is a collection of cloud-based work management, productivity and collaboration tools offered by Hornbill. Running through all applications there is a common theme running throughout the entire Hornbill product suite that is focused on Workflow, Orchestration, Automation and Integration. Hornbill includes applications like Service Manager, Collaboration, Board Manager, Document Manager, Customer Manager, and others, along with all of the cloud storage and various capabilities that enable communication, collaboration, and productivity.

Subscription Pricing

The subscription pricing model for Hornbill can appear complex because it is designed to for Enterprise organizations of all sizes, and has to cater to a wide range of users, who have a wide range of needs within any enterprise, which can in some cases lead to complex pricing, and in others can be very simple, but our subscription and pricing model must consider the following: -

In summary, the subscription model for Hornbill can seem complex, especially as your requirements become more comprehensive, because Hornbill offers a vast array of options and configurations to cater to the diverse needs of individual users and organizations. This complexity allows for a high degree of customization and cost optimization, ensuring that users and organizations can select the precise combination of services and features that best meet their requirements while controlling costs effectively.

Subscription Model In Principle

Hornbill’s subscription pricing strategy is deeply rooted in our commitment to delivering substantial business value to all. At the core of Hornbill’s value proposition, you’ll find a suite of robust productivity and workflow automation tools meticulously designed with the service provider and service requester model at the forefront of our approach.

Within the realm of Hornbill, we draw a clear distinction between two pivotal roles: “users” who actively leverage our productivity and workflow capabilities to streamline services for their colleagues, and “customers” who reap the benefits of these services. This fundamental differentiation underpins our precise subscription allocation methodology.

For Hornbill users, individuals steering the delivery of services and harnessing Hornbill’s versatile features to enhance their daily workflows, a tailored subscription is essential. These subscriptions provide access to a comprehensive array of apps, modules, and features finely tuned to their unique roles and responsibilities.

Conversely, those on the receiving end of services orchestrated by Hornbill users—commonly referred to as customers—can seamlessly interact with Hornbill through specialized portals or mobile interfaces, enriching their experience without the need for a subscription.

It’s worth highlighting that the Hornbill ecosystem often blurs these roles. A user actively utilizing Hornbill to provide services may concurrently act as a customer, benefiting from services offered by their colleagues within the same organization. For instance, picture an IT professional using Hornbill to deliver IT support to colleagues in the HR department. Simultaneously, they might access the employee portal to request services from HR users. In this dynamic context, they smoothly transition from being a Hornbill user to a Hornbill customer, showcasing the flexibility and adaptability of our subscription structure. This intricacy underscores Hornbill’s ability to cater to the diverse and evolving roles within an organization while consistently delivering maximum value to each user type.

The general guiding principles we apply when setting subscription requirements and/or pricing include: -

• Our customers should only pay for what they need.
• Our customers should be able to easily flex their subscription up/down in accordance with their subscription agreement parameters to meet changing business needs.
• Our customers own customers should not need any paid-for subscription in order to benefit from Hornbill web portals/mobile devices for guest session, that enhance the service experience delivered to them by our customers.
• Pricing should always reflect the business value in terms of productivity, enablement or automation capabilities delivered to the organization.
• We sometimes offer limited free-tier access to otherwise subscribable apps/modules/options/features within the Hornbill platform and applications ecosystem in order to allow customers to touch/see/evaluate capabilities to determine the business value they may be able to derive from the subscription to that capability. Where possible we make these features available for production use but with limits, ensuring very simple/small/low scale requirements can access teh capabilities without any subscription charge (we do not take enhancement requests to change those limits)

Subscription Extensions

The Hornbill platform provides a base level of functionality to any subscribed user. A Hornbill platform user subscription will allow the user to log in securely, and have access to a set of core capabilities that allow them to participate in workflows, even if the platform user does not have a subscription to specifically access the application that owns the workflow.

There are two classes of platform user, known as Basic and User, click to read more about Hornbill Platform User Accounts. While both types are user accounts on the platform, the Basic user account does not require a subscription, but has very limited access to the platforms capabilities. The primary reason for the Basic user account is to provide end users (our customr’s internal users) access to the Employee Portal, which is free-to-use for your entire organization and is where your end-users who are being served/supported by your Hornbill users would get access to the services and knowledge and other information you have provided to them via self-service/chatbot interfaces. The employee portal enables basic or full users to browse and subscribe to services they are allowed, raise requests for themselves, seek help or self-serve help and/or access knowledge/documentation. Basic user accounts do not have access to any function, capability or data that is considered usable by people who are using Hornbill to participate in the provision of service to other employees or customers.

The following table shows which platform features each type of user has access to

You can (and should) think of each application on the Hornbill Platform as an application in its own right, an application that builds on the foundation of the Hornbill Platform. Each application has the option of requiring an application or a per-user subscription, this is defined on an application-by-application on a commercial basis at the time of design. Applications often focus on a very specific market or function, and pricing is generally aligned with market expectation and defined on the basis of business value delivered.

While some applications on the Hornbill platform are free for platform users to use, other applications do charge a subscription that is independent of, and in addition to, the platform subscription. Generally speaking the pricing strategy for applications take into account the base cost of a platform subscription.

You should review the subscription model(s) for the Hornbill Application(s) you are considering, each application will clearly set out its subscription model and how it extends/builds on the Hornbill Platform Subscription Model.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the basis for Hornbill’s subscription pricing strategy?

Hornbill’s subscription pricing is founded on the delivery of substantial business value through a suite of productivity and workflow automation tools.

Can you explain the distinction between “users” and “customers” in Hornbill’s context?

In Hornbill, “users” actively employ our tools to deliver services to others, while “customers” are the beneficiaries of these services.

Do my end users/customers need a subscription to access Hornbill?

No, customers typically do not require a subscription. There are specific user account types that enable your end users/customers with Hornbill through specialized portals and interfaces without the need for a subscription.

Can Hornbill users also act as customers within the same organization?

Yes, Hornbill users may wear both hats and that can be easily confused. For example, an IT professional using Hornbill to provide IT support will be using the workflow and productivity tools provided to them by the Hornbill software, but that same person, often in the exact same UI/UX, might also access the employee portal or collaboration features to request services from HR and receive the HR services provided by HR users, that are also using Hornbill to deliver those services. Sometimes IT and HR might have a different instance, but often HR and IT will share the same Hornbill instance

Are there different subscription tiers for users/organizations based on their specific needs?

Yes, Hornbill offers various subscription tiers tailored to different user roles and requirements, ensuring cost-effectiveness.

How often can subscriptions be scaled or adjusted?

Subscriptions can be scaled up or down as frequently as needed in line with the terms set out in your subscription agreement, in order to accommodate changes in your organization’s requirements.

Are there add-ons or optional features available for subscription?

Yes, Hornbill provides a range of add-ons and optional features, such as advanced security or workflow automation, that can be integrated into subscriptions as needed.

Can you explain the billing cycle options for Hornbill subscriptions?

Hornbill is a B2B application so is generally billed on a commercial invoice as an annual subscription paid in advance of service provision.

Is there regional pricing variation for Hornbill subscriptions?

Yes, Hornbill may offer different plans and pricing structures in various regions to account for market dynamics and economic factors. The regional pricing is broadly speaking tied to the point of service delivery, which in the case of Hornbill means regional data centers, and pricing is generally guided by both market and jurisdiction commercial rules.

Does Hornbill provide Concurrent Subscription model

Generally speaking, No. Unlike a desktop tool that only delivers value while you are using it, Hornbill is a workflow automation platform at its core, and a typical Hornbill user benefits from a large number of capabilities that operate all of the time, even when the user is not logged into the system or using Hornbill. Everything from simply receiving important notifications, to having tasks and work lists for task and work assignment, automated activities that deliver work in their context, for example running scheduled jobs or reports etc… For this reason, Hornbill subscriptions for users are on a named basis. It should be noted that while every Hornbill User requires a base subscription (known as a platform process user), different applications can deploy different subscription models in relation to user subscription to that application/module.

How do I find out Pricing For Hornbill

The current method is pricing is via engagement with our commercial team who will first help walk you through the process of understanding what you may need in terms of Hornbill applications and modules.

Does Hornbill offer any discounts?

We do our best to define our pricing so its fair for everyone. As a general rule we aim to keep the cost of selling our solution as low as possible, and as a company are not particularly comfortable with the approach that many organizations will take around “get what you can”, nor to we subscribe to the idea of pricing high in order to offer amazing discounts at the point of sale. Basically, we aim to be fair, consistent and transparent with our pricing at all times.

What happens if Hornbill increases its subscription pricing?

The nature of our typical customer means they will often have a periodic “review the market” cycles, often these are imposed by their organizational governance so are unavoidable, and are typically in 3-5 year cycles. As a general rule, customer sign up for a term, can be 1-5 years typically, and at the point of signing we will agree term pricing, which effectively means we lock into an agreed price for the term. The agreed price is essentially a price list snapshot at the point in time the customer signs up, meaning, anything else a customer adds to their subscription in that subscription term will be based on the same pricing they signed up at, even if we have already increased our prices.

What happens if I need to review the market to satisfy our procurement process?

At the end of any subscription term, a customer may just simply roll-forward on the exact same terms as the prior subscription period, in which case the buy price remains in place, and over long subscription terms this price locking can offer very attractive pricing, we see this as a customer loyalty benefit. However, should a customer choose to review the market at the end of their term, and in order to retain the customer we need to enter into a competitive process, we will typically engage our commercial team at this point and consider this as a new business opportunity, and under these conditions, any previous price holding would be removed and we would compete on the basis of current market conditions, essentially based on the then current price list. With inflation this would most likely lead to price increases, and depending on the time since the last sales cycle could be quite significant increases in times when inflation has been high. It should also be noted that prices of some line items may decrease if there has been substantial market shifts in the competitive landscape. We would recommend that you ask us what the list price of your current subscription would be bases on todays price, that will give you an idea of the price delta (if there is any), you/your procurement team can use that information to decide if its time to review the market. You are of course entitled to review the market at any time, most of our customers do this continuously. However, for Hornbill, should we need to, at your request, engage our commercial/sales team in order to compete for your business once again, this would be a trigger for us to no longer renew on a rolling basis with your existing pricing, should we win the business this would be on our then current price list, the delta between what you were previously paying and what you will be paying effectively helps pay for the sales teams engagement.

How do I go about Adding and Removing Subscriptions?

One of the compelling things about a native cloud service like Hornbill is the fact that there are no software licensing investment concerns around the transfer of rights or ownership. Hornbill is simply a service you subscribe to and as such you can adjust your subscriptions as required, in accordance with the parameters of your subscription agreement. As and when you require a change in the number of subscriptions, be that an increase or a decrease, within the agreed terms of your subscription agreement, your authoritative contact would raise a request via the Hornbill Success Portal at which point a Subscription Change document would be sent out to you illustrating the old and new subscriptions and associated costs for you to sign off. Once this is signed we would make the necessary adjustments immediately and invoice you accordingly. If you have increased your subscriptions then your subscriptions are re calculated based on the locked price list, and you will be issued with an ‘interim invoice’ which will be a charge on a pro-rated basis for the new additions. If your change is a reduction then the calculation is based on a pro-rated reduction, and you will be issued with a ‘credit on your account’ which can be used to offset later additions or, at subscription renewal. In some cases, depending on the subscription agreement in place and at Hornbill’s discretion way may simply issue a cash refund for the reduced charges on an advanced subscription that has already been paid.

I Keep On Hitting Limits On Free Tier Items, Can you Increase Them

Certain areas of Hornbill that are normally subject to a subscription charge are enabled for use, for free, for all customers, but has some form of inherent restrictions and/or limits baked in, in the absence of a subscription. It is often asked if those limits can be increased or changed in some way. The answer generally is no, because, we decided what we felt was reasonable at the time of introduction in accordance with our Subscription Model In Principle and baked those limits into the code. So while we cannot change these, we are always open to consider requests for such changes to the product that will not undermine our ability to exchange reasonable value on a commercial basis, but we reserve the right to refuse such requests also. However, it should be noted that if there is a need to evaluate beyond what the free tier limits are, it is possible for customers to engage with us directly and request a fully functional, short term evaluations (typically 14 calendar days) of almost every available app or module that Hornbill provides. If this is the case, then please contact our customer success team to discuss your requirements and request an evaluation and they can work with you to understand your needs and arrange the evaluation period for you.