Beware of the SaaS Contact Pricing Penalty

Summary

Douglas Karr warns that SaaS platforms that price by contact count silently penalize businesses by billing for unconfirmed, bounced, inactive, or duplicate records that add no value. He illustrates the issue with his own email platform experience and extends it to CRMs, highlighting how dead data, disposable emails, and hidden cleanup tools inflate costs. The author recommends regular data hygiene audits, automation, and third‑party validation services to keep contact counts—and therefore SaaS spend—aligned with genuine, revenue‑generating contacts.