How to price font licences, from the foundry’s side.

Start from one style and one small licence

Every other price on the list is worked out from the base price: one style, licensed for desktop use by one user or a small band such as 1 to 5 users. A mistake in it carries into every tier, bundle and quote.

Hours and return

Count the hours, then decide what the family has to return and over how long. As an example, and only an example: a 12-style family that took 1,200 hours, which you want to bring in €36,000 over its first three years, needs about 120 sales at a family price of €300, or 40 a year. If 40 family sales a year looks unlikely for a release of that kind, the price or the time frame has to change. The sum doesn’t set a price. It shows when one can’t work.

Comparable releases

Look at the public shop pages of foundries of a similar size selling families of a similar scope: a text family with italics, a display face with two or three weights, a variable family. Note the single-style price, the family price, the smallest desktop band and what the family discount comes to. Prices vary widely. A survey on Alphabettes of 171 licence entries from foundries in 44 countries found that prices differ a lot between foundries, and that most charge the same price worldwide (the survey). Use what you find as a range, and place yourself in it on purpose.

The family as the main product

In the shops our studio has run for foundries, most revenue from a mid-size family comes from family licences, with single styles as the way in for smaller buyers. So set the family price first, as the number you expect most buyers to pay, and work the single-style price out from it. A single style at €50 and a family of 12 at €300 means the family costs as much as six styles.

Multipliers and bands for each kind of use

A licence for more users or another use is usually the base price times a multiplier. At some distributors a foundry gives only its base and family prices and the distributor works out the rest with its own formula, as one foundry describes in a forum thread on tier pricing. On your own shop the formula is yours to set.

Desktop

Bands of users, each a multiple of the first. The multipliers grow more slowly than the user counts: a band four times as large rarely costs four times as much. The worked example below uses 1–5 users at × 1, 6–20 at × 2.5 and 21–50 at × 4.

Web

Usually bands of monthly pageviews, priced close to desktop at the smallest band. The Alphabettes survey found desktop and basic web licences usually priced alike. Defining a pageview and setting the bands are covered in the guide to pageview licences.

Apps and ebooks

An app licence embeds the font file in software, where it can be pulled out, so it is usually priced higher: by the number of apps, and often for a term. An example: 1 app at × 2, up to 3 at × 4, up to 10 at × 8. Ebook licences are commonly priced by the number of titles. The same survey found app and ePub licences often priced higher, sometimes at double the desktop price and sometimes at ten times it.

Logos and broadcast

A logo licence is often a flat price for one style used in one mark, sometimes with the right to modify the letters. Broadcast is priced by channel, territory or audience in ways that differ between buyers, and is best quoted.

Keeping the table small

In the shops our studio has run for foundries, three to five bands per licence has been enough. Each extra band is another choice a buyer can get wrong at checkout and another row to keep in step across currencies. Above the top band, list a row without a price that asks the buyer to get in touch. That covers unlimited users, large web traffic, broadcast, OEM and anything else where the right price depends on details you’d want to ask about first.

Families, subfamilies and variable fonts

A family price is a bundle: a set of styles sold at one price, below the sum of its styles. Subfamily bundles sit between a single style and the family: the text weights, the display cuts, the roman without the italics. They give a buyer who needs four styles a price for four styles.

Price a variable font against the statics it replaces. A variable font that covers every weight of the family is usually priced at or near the family price, and offered with the family as a set. One rule holds across all of these: a buyer never pays for the same style twice. A style in a bundle in the cart is not charged again on its own, and a buyer who owns the family and later wants the variable font is usually offered it at the difference, or free.

The worked example below is not a recommendation or market data. It takes the 12-style family from earlier with a base price of €50 a style, a 4-style text subfamily at €160, a family price of €300, and the three desktop bands.

Bought one by one, the 12 styles at 21–50 users would cost €2,400. The family at that band is €1,200, the same half-price discount at every band, because the multiplier applies to the family price as it does to a style.

Term and perpetual licences

Most desktop and web licences are perpetual: paid once, kept for good. Term licences end on a date and are renewed. They are still the exception. The Alphabettes survey found temporary licences in only 18 of its 171 entries. They suit apps and other uses where the buyer’s scale changes.

A term is a second multiplier beside the tier. As an example: 1 year at × 1, 2 years at × 1.8, 3 years at × 2.5. A two-year licence for up to 3 apps is then the base × 4 × 1.8. A longer term costs less per year, which pays the buyer for committing.

Decide what a renewal costs before you sell the first term. The two usual answers are today’s list price, or the price paid last time. Today’s price is simpler to run and lets prices move. The price paid keeps long-standing buyers happy and needs a record of what each one paid. Write the choice into the licence, and remind the buyer before the term ends, since a lapsed app licence is a breach nobody meant. This isn’t legal advice. Have a lawyer read your own text.

Quotes and discounts

What a quote freezes

A larger deal is priced by hand and sent as a quote. Write down what it freezes, so the buyer can pay it weeks later at the same price:

• the styles or bundles, the licence, the tier and any term
• each line’s price and any discount, in the buyer’s currency
• the licensee’s name and the EULA version the deal is under
• the date it expires

A change to your price list after the quote is sent shouldn’t touch it.

What a discount costs

A launch discount of 30% for two weeks on a €300 family gives away €90 on every sale in that window. It pays only when it brings sales that wouldn’t otherwise have happened, or brings them early enough to matter. Education and non-profit discounts need a rule about who qualifies and a way to check it, and a licence scope to match: a student discount that covers coursework and personal projects.

The risk is a discount that never ends. A catalogue that is on sale every few months teaches buyers to wait for the next sale, and the list price stops being a price anyone pays. Give each discount an end date and a limit on uses, and keep a record of which orders used it, so a designer’s royalty is worked out on what was actually paid.

Prices in each currency

Set a price in each currency you sell in. A converted price lands on numbers like $54.37, and moves every time the exchange rate does. A price set by hand can sit on the round numbers buyers in that market expect: €50, £45, $55, ¥8,000. Round up or down to the nearest local price point, and keep the relationships inside each currency intact, so the family is still six styles’ worth everywhere.

Look at the currencies again when exchange rates drift far enough that one market is much cheaper than another. A gap of a few percent is normal. A gap large enough that buyers switch currency at checkout to save money is the signal to reset.

Raising prices without punishing past buyers

Prices drift low as families grow and costs rise. Look at the list once a year, and when a family is extended or its first bands no longer match who buys it.

1. Decide the new prices and the date they start, and announce the date on the shop or to past buyers.
2. Honour every quote already sent until it expires.
3. Leave every licence already sold as it is. A perpetual licence keeps its scope, and its price is in the past.
4. Price upgrades fairly. A buyer moving from 1–5 users to 6–20 pays today’s price for the larger tier, less what they paid.
5. Decide what term renewals cost after the change, and tell term buyers before their next renewal.

A family that gains styles raises its own question: whether past family buyers get the new styles. Either give them free to everyone who bought the complete family, or offer them at a price that counts what those buyers paid. Say which on the family’s page.

Questions to settle before prices go live

• Which style and which licence band is the base price for?
• What is the family price, and how much more do its styles cost bought one by one?
• How many bands does each licence have, and what happens above the top one?
• Can any combination of bundles and styles charge a style twice?
• What is the variable font priced against?
• Do terms have their own multipliers, and does the licence say what a renewal costs?
• Does every currency have its own rounded prices?
• Does each quote say what it freezes and when it expires?
• When does each discount end?
• What happens to past buyers when prices change?

Where Typetin fits

In Typetin a licence is a table of tiers, each with a label and a multiplier, starting from four presets, and a second axis such as a term multiplies with the tier. The multipliers in the examples above are those presets. A family bundle has one price, and a style that is in a bundle in the cart is never charged again on its own. You set a price in each currency you sell in, and nothing is converted. Quotes start on the Foundry plan. How Typetin models licences.