About Software Pricing Partners.
Pricing architecture across every market transition.
We design pricing architecture for B2B software companies and ship it into LevelSetter for your team to operate continuously. Architecting today’s ecosystem, not yesterday’s retrospective.
Every architecture decision is made against what actually happened: net-price transaction data, competitive intelligence on deals actually landed (not published list prices), customer and competitor-customer interviews, and sales-conversation analysis for the patterns data can’t capture. Each engagement sharpens the pattern library behind the next value-metric decision.
The credential isn’t a tenure at one named-brand SaaS. It’s pattern recognition across $481B+ in B2B software transactions. That breadth is the architecture-recognition no single-company resume can build.
and renewal deal patterns.
with the architecture intact.
What is Software Pricing Partners?
Software Pricing Partners (SPP) is a B2B software pricing strategy and execution consultancy, founded in 1982 and headquartered in Cornelius, North Carolina. SPP designs pricing architecture: the three structural decisions (licensing model, packaging model, pricing model) that determine how a software company captures value. The architecture ships into LevelSetter, SPP’s Continuous Monetization Platform, for the client’s team to operate continuously.
Every decision is calibrated against net-price transaction data spanning $481B+ in B2B software deals, not survey hypotheticals. SPP framed Continuous Monetization in 2014: pricing iterated on the same cadence your team ships product, not a one-time project repeated every few years. The firm serves software executive teams from growth-stage SaaS through enterprise. Its architectures have held through 50+ documented exit events. That discipline runs on a structured model of monetization (value metric, packaging, and price operated as one system) that SPP has operated since 2014 and now instruments in LevelSetter.
Who is Chris Mele?
Chris Mele is the CEO of Software Pricing Partners and the architect of LevelSetter, SPP’s Continuous Monetization Platform. He is ranked #1 on OpenView’s list of top 10 B2B SaaS pricing experts. He came to pricing as an operator. He founded the B2B software company BreakFront, ran it through a perpetual-to-subscription transition as an SPP client in 2008, and joined SPP as CEO in 2014. The architectures his team designs have held through 50+ exit events, including the pricing strategy behind BambooHR’s growth from $22M to $180M+ ARR (the company has since grown past $300M).
LevelSetter is the infrastructure his team runs. It scales practitioner judgment in the room — it doesn’t replace it.
- 1990s · Ernst & Young. Helped build the first credit-card system on Netscape for Bank of America. Rolled out the worldwide Fusion methodology for Coca-Cola during the Y2K cutover.
- 2000s · Founded BreakFront (Charlotte, NC). Raised $13M in angel and venture capital. Launched Equilibrium, one of the first web-based ERP solutions for the remodeling industry. Named an Intuit Top 10 Developer; #1 Business Management Solution, Kitchen & Bath Business Magazine; winner of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce’s Blue Diamond Award for the year’s best IT product.
- 2008 · The transition. Ran his software company through a perpetual-to-subscription pricing transition and hired Software Pricing Partners as a client.
- 2014 · Joined SPP as CEO. Began building the tools that became LevelSetter and framed Continuous Monetization as the firm’s operating discipline.
- 2018 · Acquired the firm. Bought Software Pricing Partners — the company he had first hired as a client a decade earlier.
- 2021 · The consumption-pricing warning. Questioned the consumption-pricing rush early (May 2021), arguing the real lever sits in the value metric beneath the model, not in consumption versus subscription.
- 2023 · Business of Software. Conference speaker; the session is embedded in the origin section below. Returned for further talks, including “The Price of AI.”
Chris writes and speaks on B2B software pricing: Fast Company (the trifecta of licensing, packaging, and pricing), the Forbes Technology Council, and Business of Software. Behind the scenes, he keynotes sales kickoffs, executive-team offsites, and company-wide events when new pricing rolls out. Education: B.S. Computer Science and Management Information Systems (double major), Miami University.
Boutique pricing firm. Solo consultant. Generalist consultancy. In-house pricing hire. Each one is a single credential — and each one hits its ceiling there. SPP brings three structural differentiators no single credential can match: pattern recognition across $481B+ in B2B software transactions, continuous architecture (not recommendations decks), and LevelSetter, the platform your team operates.
Three differentiators compound. One credential doesn’t.
Built from the operator’s seat.
Not the consulting bench.
SPP’s leadership ran B2B software companies before advising them. Every engagement draws on direct experience with licensing architecture, deal-desk governance, and the deal patterns in the transaction data that reveal what actually closes — not what surveys suggest.
The methodology was built on real implementations: pricing architectures that survived PE due diligence, editions that scaled with enterprise sales motions, and value metrics that held through acquisition — including the architecture lessons emerging from this AI-credits transition.
Chris Mele came to SPP the way most clients do: as a software CEO with a pricing problem. He ran his own company through a perpetual-to-subscription transition in 2008, with SPP as his pricing firm. He learned firsthand that pricing architecture is the lever every B2B software CEO eventually pulls, and that monetization is continuous, not a project that ends. He joined the firm as CEO in 2014 and acquired it in 2018. The pattern library SPP has built since spans $481B+ of B2B software deal activity.
Architecture that holds.
Through the exit.
“We were stalled out at $22M in ARR. Then we engaged with SPP and were north of $180M not long thereafter. I attribute a lot of that success to SPP helping us get our pricing strategy right.”
Operators who ran software companies.
Then built the firm.
Every member of SPP’s leadership team has held a senior seat inside a B2B software company before joining the firm. Operational experience is what separates a recommendation that sounds right from an architecture that holds under pressure.
Chris Mele
CEO
Former CEO of a B2B software company recognized as an Intuit Top 10 Developer and winner of the Blue Diamond Award for best IT product. Ranked #1 on OpenView’s list of B2B SaaS pricing experts. Business of Software speaker, regular keynote at software-company sales kickoffs, Forbes Tech Council contributor. Ernst & Young alumnus where he helped build the first credit-card system on Netscape for Bank of America.
Jordan Cannon
CPO
Former senior AWS architect at Mission Cloud. Heads AI and machine learning at SPP. Owns product and engineering for LevelSetter, the platform that turns SPP’s pattern library into real-time answers inside live deals. The ML models he builds detect pricing drift before it hits revenue and surface buyer-behavior signals the deal desk can’t see manually.
Nikesh Parajuli
Head of Front-End & UX
Leads front-end engineering and user experience for LevelSetter. Builds the interfaces that turn SPP’s transaction analysis into clear, decision-ready views for pricing leaders, deal teams, and CEOs operating the architecture.
Blair Swogger
CFO
Former CFO of a SaaS company. Has served as CEO, COO, and CFO across software and consumer-product companies. Owns SPP’s margin and deal-modeling practice, the financial pressure-test that tells clients whether a pricing move expands gross margin or erodes it.
Giancarlo Proenca
CIO
Leads competitive intelligence across SPP’s industry verticals. Owns one of the largest proprietary libraries of competitor street pricing and discount behavior in B2B software, what competitors actually close at, not what they publish.
How does SPP differ from traditional pricing consultancies?
A traditional pricing consultancy runs a project and leaves a recommendations deck. SPP designs the full pricing architecture, ships it into LevelSetter, and stays engaged while your team operates it continuously.
Surveys, interviews, willingness-to-pay studies
A project that ends with a recommendations deck
The deck and a price list
Pricing as one practice among many, across many industries
Re-engagement every few years when the model drifts
Net-price transaction data across $481B+ in B2B software deals, plus win/loss patterns
Continuous architecture, revised on your product’s own cadence
LevelSetter, the platform your team operates day-to-day
B2B software pricing architecture exclusively: licensing, packaging, and pricing as one system
50+ documented exit events with the architecture intact
See Our Edge for the full comparison against generalist consultancies, boutique pricing firms, and solo consultants.
Define. Deploy. Defend.
The scope adapts to your business. The methodology doesn’t. Every engagement runs through three phases that have held across every market transition since SaaS began.
Define the
architecture
Transaction analysis, customer conversations, competitive intelligence, and simulation against your actual data, before anything changes. The three-decisions (licensing, packaging, pricing) are decided as one coherent system, not stitched together by committee.
Deploy alongside
your team
Sales enablement on real deals, go-to-market rollout, discount governance, and CRM integration through LevelSetter. Your team operates the architecture from the start, with SPP guiding through architecture iterations and renewal sprints.
Defend continuously
across every quarter
Strategic reviews, competitive response, and continuous monitoring inside LevelSetter, so your team gets sharper at this every quarter, not more dependent on us. Pricing isn’t a project to finish. It’s a capability your team operates.
See the full methodology for the architecture-decision sequence and the rollout cadence.
We hire operators.
Not consultants.
Everyone at SPP has run sales, product, finance, engineering, or data inside a software company. We’ve defended pricing in our own boardrooms. But one company teaches you one playbook. Patterns that hold everywhere only emerge across hundreds of billions in transactions.
If you’ve led pricing, packaging, or go-to-market at a B2B software company and want to do this work full-time, we’re always interested in talking. See open roles →
If the questions on this page are the ones on your desk, start with how an engagement actually runs: the architecture-decision sequence, the rollout cadence, and where your team takes over. Or skip ahead and talk to a pricing expert about your own licensing, packaging, and pricing decisions. If your deal data is in hand, Pricing Ground Truth turns it into a same-day read.
Frequently asked questions
Hire the firm with the pattern library.
Not the resume.
Three structural differentiators no individual operator, boutique, or new hire can match: pattern recognition across $481B+ in B2B software transactions, continuous architecture, and the platform your team runs. Renewable. Each renewal is one we earn.