Rule of thumb: If the client needs or wants access now or in the future to their scenario’s, give them their own account. Who will be billed is for you to discuss with your client. You can either have them create their own account or you create one in name for them, with your client none the wiser.
Pro’s of their own account:
You can be added as App Developer and have full access to build scenario’s, with easy access from your own account.
Your client can access Make whenever.
Your client only has access to their scenario’s.
Your client can manage their own connections
If agreed upon, billing goes via your client directly. So you don’t have to follow up on costs, extra costs and invoices.
Con’s of their own account:
Client changing things on their own which breaks scenario’s (yes, I have had that happen)
They can kick you from the account (unless you are the admin who set up the account for them)
Performance and limits are according their Make plan.
Pro’s of your own account (be at least on the Teams plan):
You can manage used operations per team (create one team per client) and bill exactly what is used. (You can use Make API for this)
Priority scenario executing for all teams
Higher maximum file size
High customer support
Con’s of your own account:
I would never give access to my client
May be a hassle to migrate to a personal account later
Client must be willing to share credentials for each connection.
Too many connections with the same service can be confusing
Cost Per Operation is higher than Core and Pro plans.
If making separate accounts that means it will use have clients payment details etc. lets say the make scenario requires other paid services eg a pdf module, chatgpt etc that means we would have to get the client to sign up to these services and input payment details. Which some client might not like. How would you approach this so the client only has 1 bill? (Hope this makes sense)
Use a HTTP module from their account to hit a scenario you have crafted in your own account, (your trigger needs to be a webhook and the output returned in the webhook response).
Then you can bill them for that usage, although I just tell my client’s what software they will need in order to facilitate whatever automation I build for them prior to building anything out, and they are usually fine with it.
Yeah it’s the cost of doing business with multiple tools. You don’t want to hack their billing because untangling them from your own bill gets hairy.
There is no known solution for SaaS billing for clients as far as I know. But never ever share your plans with your clients unless your product specifically allows this.
Hi Henk,
Regarding the strategy to create dedicated accounts for clients, is there a way this could be automated using Make API?
This way would make it easy to build a workflow where the account is created and setup with some template and stuff without having to do it manually?