Why we charge per client, not per person

When I started Beacon & Ledger I had three clients and a colleague working with me offshore. That is the whole firm. Two people, three clients.

I went looking for practice management software and kept hitting the same wall.

TaxDome charged per seat, annually, paid up front. Adding my colleague meant buying a second licence for a year, in advance, to serve three clients.

Karbon charged per user too. Adding him meant paying again every month. For three clients.

Pixie does not charge per user, but its starting price felt far too high for a firm our size. Three clients, and we would have paid like a much bigger practice.

Engager got the pricing right. Priced by the number of clients I looked after, with my colleague included at no extra cost. I just didn't enjoy using it day to day.

Since then TaxDome has moved to per-client pricing too, with the whole team included. They were right to. It tells you the model was the problem, not me.

What that taught us

Two things make software unaffordable for a small firm, and they are different problems.

Charging per person taxes you for having colleagues. The moment you bring someone in — an apprentice, a bookkeeper, someone offshore — your bill goes up before you have won a single client. It is backwards: the people are how you serve clients, not what you are buying.

A high starting price taxes you for being small. Some tools price per client and still start at a hundred pounds a month, which means a three-client practice subsidises the firms with three hundred.

Ordinect was never going to be either of those.

How Ordinect is priced

Per client. Unlimited users. One product — everybody gets everything.

Add your apprentice, your bookkeeper, your offshore colleague, your co-director. It costs nothing. Grow your client base and the price grows with it, gently — the more clients you look after, the less each one costs.

Start free. Up to five clients, free, with no card.

See the full pricing

We are not the cheapest, and here is why

At the same number of clients you will find cheaper. We charge a little more because of what is underneath: the AML risk assessment, the customer due diligence gate that will not let a client go live until the checks are done, evidence that cannot be edited after the fact — not by your staff, and not by us — and a compliance file you can hand a regulator in one click.

Most tools bolt compliance on. It is the first thing we built.

If that is not what you need, you should buy the cheaper one. We would rather tell you that now.

AML checks: your choice, either way

AML costs real money per check, so we do not hide it in the subscription and hope you are an average firm.

Bring your own key. Already have an account with a provider? Connect it. You keep your own contract and your own rates, and we never touch the billing.

Or use ours. No contract to negotiate, no minimum commitment. You pay per check, and you can see exactly what you have spent and on which client.

We are adding providers over time. You are never locked to one, and you are never locked to us.