“Sales came up with a whole new pricing model, and then we had to figure out how to actually bill for it and recognize revenue. Zuora partnered with us not just to stand it up, but to keep helping us along the way.” — Richard Hickey, Manager – Revenue Accounting, Pantheon
About
Pantheon powers more than 700,000 websites for thousands of organizations, from startups to global enterprises.Rather than handing customers blank servers, Pantheon gives teams — many without in-house developers — one place to build, launch, optimize, and run their websites.
Industry:
Software and technology
01
The Challenge
For years, Pantheon sold its platform in flat-fee tiers, each with a set amount of site traffic. But traffic is variable, and flat tiers made it hard to match price to value. When customers outgrew their tier, they were moved up to the next one or billed for the extra traffic — approaches that often came as a surprise and created friction. Pantheon wanted a model that tied what customers pay to what they actually use, while giving them a bill they could plan for.
02
The Solution
Pantheon is moving from static subscription tiers to a credit-based usage model, built on Zuora Billing and Zuora Revenue. Customers pay a flat fee that includes a set number of credits, spend those credits as they use the platform, and can buy more whenever they need them. Working session by session with Pantheon’s finance systems and revenue teams, Zuora helped design the new product catalog, rate plan charges, drawdown SKUs, and overage handling — then build the testing scenarios that let Pantheon launch with confidence.
03
The Benefits
- A clear path from static tiers to usage-based pricing, rolled out in phases alongside existing multi-year contracts.
- Predictable spend for Pantheon’s customers, who can see their credit balance and buy more on their own terms.
- Revenue recognized accurately from day one on a pricing model that was brand new to the team.
- Clean data flowing from Salesforce into Zuora Billing and on to Zuora Revenue, with no missing opportunities or mismatched contract values.
- Complex true-up processes automated with Zuora Workflow.
- Faster answers to revenue questions with Zuora AI, from variance analysis to explaining unusual swings to the CFO.
“I’m always confident that the data sets are accurate. If you aren’t comfortable in your raw data, then trying to implement AI advancements and advanced reporting is kind of meaningless.”
Pantheon serves two very different groups of customers: a large base of small, pay-as-you-go accounts billed monthly, and larger organizations on annual and multi-year contracts. Under its previous pricing model, both groups bought flat-fee tiers that each came with a support level, and every month the team had to watch traffic and adjust tiers to match. As the business grew, that model became harder to explain to customers and harder to run.
So Pantheon’s product team, working with an outside pricing consultancy, designed a new approach built on credits. Customers still pay a predictable flat fee, but that fee now buys a pool of credits they spend as they use the platform. When they need more, they buy more. The change gives customers visibility into their own usage and control over their budget, instead of a bill that moves with factors outside their control.
Designing the model was one thing. Running it was another. “Sales came up with it, and then we’re trying to figure out, well, how do I actually bill for it and recognize revenue?” says Richard Hickey, who manages revenue accounting at Pantheon. Most of the team had never worked with usage-based SKUs before.
That’s where Zuora came in. Over many working sessions, Zuora’s account team and Pantheon’s technical account manager worked through the requirements with Pantheon’s finance systems and revenue teams: how the rate plan charges should be structured, how drawdown SKUs should work, and how to handle overages.
Once billing was set up, the same process moved to revenue recognition, making sure every credit purchase and drawdown would land correctly in Zuora Revenue. Test scenarios were built and run in a sandbox before any customer saw the new pricing. When people on the project changed, Zuora helped carry knowledge forward so the work didn’t lose momentum.
“I feel like we’ve got a good partner to help make sure that we’re not recognizing revenue inaccurately relative to a brand new pricing model for us.” — Richard Hickey, Manager – Revenue Accounting, Pantheon
Because the foundation is already in Zuora, each phase is a matter of configuring and testing, not rebuilding. Thomas McDonough, Pantheon’s manager of financial systems and its primary Zuora administrator, notes that Zuora Workflow has been “huge” for automating Pantheon’s true-up process. For the revenue team, the connection between Zuora Billing and Zuora Revenue keeps close questions easy to answer, and Zuora AI now helps explain unusual revenue movements in minutes instead of hours of manual digging.
“Zuora is just a very reliable platform. I deal with very few errors from the billing team when they’re doing their various actions.” — Thomas McDonough, Manager of Financial Systems, Pantheon
