When pricing a SaaS product people overweight the importance of price level and ignore what is being paid for.

First, per-user is not a panacea but it is widespread. You can use whatever metric you want as long as the customer will understand how the metric aligns with the economic value of your application. Sure CRM’s value may scale according to the number of reps but is that as important as the number of active accounts, leads, size of pipeline? (My point is per user is one metric and there may be better choices.)

Second, price is related to what the customer is getting i.e. the package of product functionality and, in the case of SaaS, the services. Having low entry prices and a clear upgrade path is a must in SaaS. And there is nothing wrong with having some hugely expensive options that are not publicized except to existing customers who might be interested.

Finally, high price points are indeed harder to sell. But if your objective is to have a long term relationship with your customer, think in terms of getting paid over time (providing you can withstand the cashflow drought). Sure, we’d like to have more money sooner than later. But sometimes the value of a continuous payment stream is higher than the value of a company that lives off a large individual transactions.