Gated Pricing

The gate no longer holds. When pricing isn't published, the answer a buyer receives comes from Reddit threads, review-site data, and whatever an AI model absorbed, which may be outdated, wrong, or a competitor's framing. The vendor traded control of the conversation for control of a page, and kept neither.

There's a legitimate version of the underlying problem (genuinely variable enterprise pricing), but "it depends" can be explained honestly: pricing models, ranges, and what drives cost can all be published without printing a rate card.

A buyer who hits gated pricing typically does one or more of the following:

1. Asks an AI assistant, which aggregates unofficial sources
2. Searches "[product] pricing reddit"
3. Asks peers
4. Drops the vendor from the shortlist

The demo request the gate was designed to force has become the least likely outcome, chosen mainly when the buyer has no alternative source.

A buyer shortlisting two tools finds published pricing on one site and a "Talk to sales" button on the other. She asks an AI assistant what the second tool costs; it cites a year-old forum thread with a number 30% below current list price. The first sales conversation now starts from a price the vendor never set.

• Believing the gate forces a conversation. It forces a workaround: an assistant, a forum, a peer, or a shorter shortlist.
• Ignoring that AI assistants answer the pricing question anyway. When the vendor won't answer, assistants do, from unofficial sources.
• Publishing nothing because exact pricing varies. Publish the model, the range, and what moves the number instead.
• Measuring the gate's success by demo requests. The metric never counts who left silently.