What's the Matrix Requirements Pricing like in 2024? One of our customers kindly alerted us to something crazy which has been going on, and we're the first website to report on this.

Here's what they wrote:

Take a look - this was the Matrix Requirements pricing page in mid-2024:

As you can see, while their software is not cheap, it does offer (somewhat) reasonable entry-level plans: The Essential plan at 390€ / month with 3 seats, and the Team plan at 580€ / month, also with 3 seats.

But take a look at how the pricing page looks now, in December 2024 (link):

Yikes! So what happened here? First off, it looks like they entirely scrapped the entry-level Essential plan which was 390€ / month. So, for early-stage startups, they no longer offer realistic pricing options any more. But it gets even worse: They significantly hiked the prices for all other packages, too.

While all of those price hikes are not huge, the general purpose is clear: They want to make more money, and they want to focus on large companies, screwing small startups over in the process.

And what happens to existing customers? One Matrix Requirements customer told us that existing customers will be forced to upgrade to one of the more expensive tiers. Wow.

That's not right.

From the standpoint of a business owner, I can somewhat understand them - offering software to startups is certainly not a high-revenue business, and it's simply the path of least resistance to target mid-size and large companies instead. They simply have more money.

Generally speaking, if you get to choose between one enterprise customer paying you 10k€ per month or 20 startup customers paying you 500€ per month, most businesses would go for the enterprise. That's because offering customer support and onboarding to 20 startups is usually (much) more work than to one enterprise.

And given that Matrix Requirements was, for the most part, acquired by a private equity (PE) firm a while ago, this was to be expected - those companies try to buy companies at a "bargain" price, only to pull the levers which yield the biggest increase in company valuation, only to "flip" (sell) it later at a higher price again. While all of that sounds borderline evil (it mostly is - PE has a bad reputation for a reason), this had to be expected once the Matrix Requirements founders sold their company. Hence the Matrix Requirement pricing increase.

And it happens to many software companies - servicing small startups is simply not very profitable.

But here's the thing: We chose to be different when we build our own eQMS software, Formwork. Instead of focusing on the "big bucks", we're focusing on startups. All our Formwork pricing tiers include unlimited (!) users, so you're not constrained to only three (!) seats on the Matrix Requirements plan. Also, at only 499€ / month, it's now literally cheaper than the cheapest Matrix Requirements plan. That's amazing! And, best of all, it doesn't look like Windows 95 (Matrix Requirements still does).

So, if you haven't yet, take a look at moving to Formwork - you won't regret it. You can export your data any time, and many of our customers have already passed EU MDR and FDA certifications. If you're a startup, we'll always be there to support you!