Volume-Based Pricing: Which of the Following 5 Volume Pricing Strategies Works Best for You?
Bonus! Includes Volume Pricing Examples and Practical Guidance on Implementing Volume Pricing in Salesforce Without CPQ
Last updated December 28, 2025
Volume-based pricing (also known as quantity-based pricing) is one of the most widely used pricing strategies across industries. From manufacturing and distribution to SaaS and professional services, the principle is simple: reward customers for buying more.
Yet, despite the prevalence of volume pricing—especially in B2B—Salesforce does not support it natively unless you invest in CPQ or Revenue Cloud. For many businesses, that investment is substantial or difficult to justify.
This guide breaks down five proven volume pricing strategies, explains where each one is most effective, and shows you how to implement volume pricing in Salesforce without CPQ or Revenue Cloud. Along the way, you’ll find practical examples, pitfalls to avoid, and guidance to help you choose the right approach for your business.
Your Guide to Volume-Based Pricing
What is Volume Pricing?
Volume-based pricing is a pricing strategy where the unit price decreases as the quantity purchased increases. Simply put: the more a customer buys, the lower the cost per unit.
Key characteristics:
1. Most used in B2B transactions, where deal sizes and purchasing commitments are larger.
2. Discounts are usually expressed as a percentage reduction or a fixed monetary discount from the list price.
3. Pricing logic may apply to a single deal—or to cumulative purchases over time.
Why Do Companies Offer Volume Discounts?
Volume discounts are not just about generosity—they are a strategic lever. Companies typically use them to:
- Increase deal size by encouraging customers to buy more in a single transaction.
- Drive long-term commitment, especially when tying discounts to total ownership or annual volume.
- Support promotions, seasonal campaigns, or new product launches.
- Reduce operational costs, such as fulfilment, logistics, or onboarding, by handling fewer, larger orders.
- Move aging or surplus inventory more quickly.
When designed correctly, volume pricing aligns customer incentives with business profitability.
Where Do Companies Go Wrong with Volume Discounts?
Despite good intentions, volume pricing often underperforms due to poor execution. The five most common mistakes are:
1. Rogue discounts – Salespeople apply inconsistent or negotiable discounts without referencing approved pricing rules.
2. Ignoring fulfilment and support costs – Discounts fail to reflect channel-specific costs or customer-specific servicing requirements.
3. Static pricing models – Volume discounts are left unchanged despite shifts in competition, cost structures, or customer behaviour.
4. Too many exceptions – End-of-quarter pressure leads to frequent overrides, eroding margin discipline.
5. Poor customer communication – Customers often lack understanding of how discounts work, resulting in extended negotiations, delayed contracts, or smaller deal sizes.
Handling volume pricing in spreadsheets and email or verbal approval chains exacerbates these problems. In contrast, automating volume pricing—particularly in Salesforce—helps address many of these challenges by improving consistency, visibility, and governance.
What Does a Good Volume Discount Pricing Strategy Look Like?
A strong volume pricing strategy strikes a balance between simplicity, profitability, and scalability. In practice, most strategies fall into one of five categories:
1. Bands
2. Tiers
3. Increments
4. Total ownership
5. Product bundles
Let’s explore each approach, with examples and use cases.
1. Volume-Based Pricing by Bands
Band-based pricing is the most common and easiest to understand. The customer pays one single unit price, determined by the total quantity purchased.
If a customer buys 25 units, all units are priced at the 11–30 band rate. If they buy 35 units, all units are priced at the 31–100 band rate.
- Manufacturing and many other industries
- Simple pricing communication
- Short sales cycles
Trade off: Lower average unit price and margin compared to other strategies.
2. Volume-Based Pricing by Tiers
Tier-based pricing charges different prices for each quantity range. Using the same example, a customer buying 35 units would pay:
- $100 for units 1–10
- $95 for units 11–30
- $90 for units 31–35
Tier pricing results in a higher average unit price than band pricing.
Best for:
- SaaS, software, data storage, and subscription businesses
- Situations where margin protection is critical
Consideration: Harder to explain and calculate without automated pricing tools.
Band Versus Tier Volume Pricing – What’s the Difference?
When comparing band versus tier volume pricing, the key differences are:
- The customer pays the same price for all units within a band and different prices depending on the tier.
- Tier-based pricing is less popular with customers and salespeople because it’s harder to calculate and understand the volume pricing strategy.
3. Volume-Based Pricing by Increments
Incremental pricing is a more granular version of tier pricing, where the unit price drops slightly for every additional unit purchased.
As shown in the table below, you can see that with most incremental pricing arrangements, the reduction in unit cost is slight with each increase in quantity.
This model works particularly well when incremental units deliver very high marginal profit once fixed costs are covered.
Best for:
- High-volume, low-cost items
- Training, exams, or events with fixed delivery costs
4. Volume-Based Pricing by Total Ownership
Total ownership pricing bases discounts on the customer’s cumulative holdings, not just what they buy in a single deal.
For example, a customer with 100 licenses purchasing 10 more is priced based on a total of 110 licenses.
This approach reduces renegotiation friction and creates predictability for both customers and sales teams.
Best for:
- SaaS and subscription businesses
- Long-term customer relationships
- Framework or enterprise agreements
5. Volume-Based Pricing by Product Bundles
Product bundling offers discounts when customers purchase multiple products together, rather than individually.
Bundles:
1. Increase average deal size
2. Simplify buying decisions
3. Encourage adoption of complementary products.
Common in telecoms, technology, ecommerce, and subscription products, bundles are often positioned as “startup / most popular / enterprise” or “beginner / professional / advanced” options.
Product bundling is particularly beneficial for customers who require multiple products or components to fulfill their needs. Bundling or grouping these products into holistic solutions makes the customer purchasing process easier.
Best for:
- Products containing many components.
- Situations in which the customer finds it challenging to put their solution together.
Which Volume Discount Pricing Strategy is Best?
The following table provides a side-by-side comparison of the 5 different volume discount pricing strategies, indicating the pros and cons for each approach:
Bands
Pros:
- Easy for the customer to understand.
- Simple for salespeople to calculate the product price and discount.
- Easy to communicate in customer-facing information.
Cons:
- Lower average unit price and reduced margin.
Tiers
Pros:
- Higher overall unit price and therefore increased margin compared to bands.
- Helps avoid situations where a slight increase in quantity reduces the overall unit price. In other words, the tiers' approach to volume-based pricing means customers cannot initiate a lower average price through a slight increase in quantity.
Cons:
- More difficult for the customer to understand how the final unit price was determined.
- More difficult for salespeople to calculate the product price and discount, especially without an appropriate pricing tool.
- Harder to communicate during sales dialogue or customer-facing documents.
Increments
Pros:
- Higher overall margin compared to other volume pricing strategies.
- Customers are encouraged to purchase additional, high-margin products or services.
Cons:
- It is more challenging for salespeople and customers to easily calculate or communicate the overall price (at least without an automated pricing tool).
- Additional maintenance work for system administrators and product managers, particularly when you want to increase (or reduce) prices.
Total Ownership
Pros:
- Customers are incentivized to increase or upgrade their product holding, because they know a significant volume discount applies to a relatively small purchase.
- Clarity on future prices and margins, along with fewer protracted negotiations, assuming discounts are agreed upfront.
Cons:
- Reduced margin on additional product purchases (although that may be difficult to avoid).
- Calculating and quantifying the customer's existing product holding requires a robust approach. In some businesses, this may be more difficult than it sounds!
Product Bundles
Pros:
- Increased average deal size when customers take up bundles.
- Ease of purchase and sales cycle when customers need to buy multiple products or components as part of an overall solution.
- Improved sales efficiency if salespeople can add product bundles to opportunities rather than searching for multiple individual products.
Cons:
- Reduced margins if bundles include too many reduced-price or free products.
- Customers may require more flexibility over product selection or different combinations of products than are included in the bundles.
- Allocating bundle revenue back to individual products for margin tracking and revenue recognition can be challenging.
- Risk of poor customer perception if bundles do not offer a worthwhile incentive compared to purchasing products individually or outside of a bundle.
How Do I Decide the Right Volume Pricing Strategy for My Business?
There’s no universal answer. The right strategy depends on:
- Customer expectations and market norms
- Cost structure, especially fixed versus variable costs
- Sales complexity and deal size
- Systems integration, particularly ERP and billing platforms
Tip: Many companies use multiple volume pricing strategies across different products or customer segments.
Don’t forget!
You don’t need to commit to a single volume pricing strategy. Sometimes, it’s more beneficial to adopt different approaches for different products in your range.
How to Implement Volume Pricing in Salesforce (without CPQ)
Volume pricing is not offered as a standard feature in Salesforce. One option is to purchase an add-on, like CPQ or Revenue Cloud. However, the cost and effort to implement these solutions often discourage many people, and may not be appropriate for your business.
A better option is the GSP Volume Pricing app, a powerful, cost-effective alternative for many companies, which is Salesforce-native and quick and easy to implement. The app makes volume pricing in Salesforce simple with out-of-the-box support for volume pricing by bands, tiers, and increments. You can also customize the app to support a total ownership style of volume-based pricing.
Watch the video below to see how the app provides volume pricing in Salesforce without CPQ:
How Omada Identity Simplified Volume Pricing in Salesforce Without CPQ
Omada Identity previously relied on spreadsheets to manage pricing tiers, leading to version control issues and approval gaps.
By implementing GSP Volume Pricing, they:
- Eliminated spreadsheet-based pricing
- Centralized tier pricing inside Salesforce
- Improved pricing consistency and governance
“The GSP Volume Pricing app transformed the way our salespeople use Salesforce. We no longer maintain lots of spreadsheets with everyone using different versions because all our pricing now happens directly in Salesforce!”
Alex Ferrario, Revenue Operations Manager. How Omada Identity Simplified Volume Pricing Without CPQ.
How Do You Offer Volume Discounts on Product Bundles?
The GSP Volume Pricing app integrates seamlessly with the GSP Product Manager. This app helps your salespeople add product bundles and groups in Salesforce, making volume discounts effortless.
Make Volume-Based Pricing in Salesforce Simple
If you’re looking to make volume pricing in Salesforce super simple, why not start with a step-by-step walkthrough of how GSP Volume Pricing can help?
Additionally, you can install it now from AppExchange directly to your sandbox or production environment to see how it works for yourself.
Volume Pricing Methods: Commonly Asked Questions
Additional Resources
- The Power of Pricing - Published in 2003 by McKinsey, this is a great article on the impact (negative and positive) of volume-based pricing (you'll need to register for a free McKinsey account).
- The Low-Risk and Low-Cost Alternatives to CPQ in Salesforce – This blog explains how the GSP Product Manager, Volume Pricing, and Subscription Manager apps combine to create a powerful CPQ alternative for Salesforce users.
- Smarter Product Selection with the GSP Product Manager - This blog post details how the GSP Product Manager enables product bundling and packaging in Salesforce.
- The Essential Guide to Products and Price Books in Salesforce - Wondering how products and price books work in Salesforce? This blog post clearly explains exactly how it works.
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