---
layout: post
title: >-
  Making Sure The Latest API Pricing Update Is Available In A Developer Portal
  Messaging Area
image: >-
  http://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/api-evangelist-site/blog/auth0-pricing-fma.png
author:
  name: kinlane
tags:
  - Portal
  - Messaging
  - Pricing
  - ai
---
I am spending a significant amount of time looking through the pricing pages for leading API providers, working to get a sense for some of the common approaches to API monetization in use across the space. Along the way I am finding some simple approaches from API providers that I wanted to share as bit-size API planning stories here on the blog.

[After recently landing on the pricing page for identity service provider Auth0](https://auth0.com/pricing), I saw that they included a simple message and link to the latest blog post about API pricing changes. It is a simple, subtle, yet very prominent approach to making sure your API consumers are aware of pricing changes that may impact their integration. [I recently wrote about providing a messaging area to reach developers upon platform login](http://apievangelist.com/2015/11/04/educating-api-developers-with-each-login-over-at-cloudelements/), but this approach from Auth0 is about providing relevant messaging no matter where you are at in the developer portal--not just at login.

Couple of lessons for me, extracted from this approach:

1.  **Prominent FMA -** Providing a prominently placed, flexible messaging area, can help make sure your API consumers stay up to speed on the latest, when it comes to platform operations. 
2.  **Pricing Storytelling -** Telling the story around each change in pricing is a critical aspect of operation. Publishing a story on your blog, syndicating out through your social channels, and prominent placement via a FMA is key.

This help rekenforce the fact that we should make sure to regularly communicating out our decisions around API monetization. Also making sure there is a saturation factor to our messaging, and that it is available via our blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other relevant page or channel used to reach API consumers.

I have a whole list of bit-size API monetization, pricing, and planning stories queued up. I will try to space them out, alongside other stories, but you will just have to suffer a little as I spend time expanding on my [API monetization](http://monetization.apievangelist.com/), and [API plans](http://plans.apievangelist.com/) research areas.