How do SaaS companies manage entitlements—and what’s the best approach for growth?

How do SaaS companies manage entitlements—and what’s the best approach for growth?

Entitlement management is critical for SaaS companies to control access to features, plans, and usage limits. We discussed this last week with Naveen Mohan, a monetization & growth leader with experience at incredible software companies like Oracle, Adobe, Loom, and Otter.ai.

Here are five common approaches:

1️⃣ Hard-Coded:

Pros: Quick to implement for simple products or MVPs.

Cons: Inflexible—any changes (e.g., new plans, updated limits) require code changes and deployments, slowing iteration.

2️⃣ Database-Driven:

Pros: Centralized, easier to update entitlements without code changes. Good for scaling as plans evolve.

Cons: Still requires developer input or manual work if not paired with admin tooling.

3️⃣ Middleware Between the App and Systems like Stripe:

Pros: Keeps entitlements synced with billing and other downstream systems, ensuring consistency across subscriptions and access.

Cons: If you're building in-house, can be very expensive to build and often hard to allocate resources to. If you're outsourcing, needs to serve both developers and product/growth practioners.

4️⃣ Feature Flags:

Pros: Highly dynamic—features can be turned on/off instantly for different users or plans. Excellent for experimentation and iteration. Familiar interface for developers.

Cons: Can create flag hygiene issues if the tooling isn't there to manage long-lived flags.

5️⃣ Token-Based:

Pros: Fast and secure since user entitlements are packaged in a token. Ideal for lightweight, high-performance setups.

Cons: Tokens need frequent refreshing to reflect changes in real-time, adding complexity.

In our upcoming episode, Naveen shares insights on how to operationalize growth and monetization as a discipline within high-growth SaaS companies.

#pricingtips #b2bsaas #b2bgrowth #monetization #billingsystem

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