Metrics and packages rewritten: steps, hosts, hours and regions outnumber price hikes

Atlassian renamed Jira's automation quota metric from rule runs to automation steps and set new per-plan caps: Free from 100 to 150 per subscription a month, Standard from a flat 1,700 a month to 400 per user, Premium from 1,000 to 750 per user, and Enterprise from Unlimited to 1,000 per user, now capped ^[11]. Atlassian's usage doc explains that total usage is the sum of all automation steps across your Atlassian apps ^[1], and that agentic components are billed separately under Rovo credits and do not consume automation steps ^[2]. The prior model, per Atlassian's earlier packaging announcement, gave customers a single pooled limit across Jira Cloud products ^[3].

Datadog renamed database host to billable host in the Database Monitoring FAQ and redefined it as a database instance, self-hosted or cloud-managed, running one or more logical databases, rather than any monitored physical or virtual server ^[12]. The new wording sits in the pricing FAQ itself ^[12]. Cost guides still describe the product as $70 per database host a month ^[5], a rate that did not move; the definition of the unit did.

Twilio changed Video from usage-based billing at $0.004 per participant per minute to a model with 5,000 hours free, then $1 per active user hour or $150 per named user per month ^[13]. Our capture had logged the opposite move two weeks earlier, when Twilio dropped the hours model for per-minute billing ^[6]. Pricing trackers quote the free allowance as the headline, with 5,000 free hours covering a small team for months ^[7].

Modal cut the floor of its region-selection surcharge from 1.5 to 1.15 times base compute prices, with the ceiling unchanged at 1.75, across Starter, Team and Enterprise ^[14]. Pricing references still carry the old range, describing region selection as billed at 1.5 to 1.75 times base prices ^[8], so the page is ahead of the web here too.

Salesforce removed the Free Suite plan at $0 per user per month from the CRM suites lineup; the small-business page now shows only Starter Suite and Pro Suite, and Free Suite is gone from every feature comparison table below ^[15]. The page states the Starter Suite SKU at $25 USD per user per month, billed monthly or annually ^[9]. Reviews still advertise a free forever plan for up to two users ^[10].

Atlassian documents the new unit rather than the new caps: every trigger, condition, action, branch and loop counts as a step, pooled at the organization level ^[1], with AI agent steps metered elsewhere ^[2]. Datadog put the definition in the pricing FAQ itself: a billable host is any database instance running one or more logical databases ^[12]. Salesforce kept its one published number, $25 per user per month for Starter Suite ^[9]. Twilio and Modal changed their pages without a note ^[13][14].

The web lagged on four of the five. Datadog cost guides still size Database Monitoring at $70 per database host without the new definition ^[5]. Modal pricing references still describe the region surcharge as 1.5 to 1.75 times base ^[8]. Salesforce reviews still promise a free forever plan for up to two users ^[10]. Twilio trackers still lead with 5,000 free hours ^[7], which happens to be right again after the reversal. Only Atlassian shipped documentation alongside the change ^[1][2].

Pricing pages logged 204 changes across 202 companies in the week of Aug 31 → Sep 7, a 1.0 ratio to the eight-week average of 194.8 ^[16]. Packaging led: 93 packaging changes against 55 pure pricing changes and 56 product changes, with 77 expansions and 32 contractions ^[16].

Price direction was soft: 14 increases, a 0.9 ratio to the mean of 14.9, and 6 cuts, a 0.8 ratio, with 8 hidden-pricing events against 6 reveals ^[17]. Promotions ran at 22, a 1.2 ratio to the average of 18.5 ^[18].

The week's theme was the unit of measure. Atlassian changed what counts as one automation, Datadog what counts as one host, Twilio whether a minute or an hour is the unit, Modal what a region costs on top. None of them changed a headline price.