In one sentence
QFormance is sold in three tiers — Starter $249, Professional $499, Business $999 per month — with two seat types so you only pay full-user rates for the people who actually edit records, not every employee who reads an SOP.
- The seat type makes the math work. Full users are 1× against your tier inclusion. Read & Acknowledge users are billed at $3/month each in blocks of 25. A 200-employee plant rarely pays for more than 35–40 Full seats.
- The tier hard cap is on Full users only. Starter caps at 10, Professional at 30, Business is unlimited. R&A users don't count toward the cap. Cross the cap and the system asks you to upgrade — by design.
- All modules are included on every tier. No "auditing add-on", no "training upgrade". You pick a tier on workforce size, not features.
The three tiers
| Starter | Professional | Business | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $249 | $499 | $999 |
| Annual / mo | $208 | $416 | $833 |
| Full users included | 5 | 15 | 40 |
| Maximum full users | 10 | 30 | Unlimited |
| R&A seats included | 25 | 100 | 500 |
| Add'l full user | $35/mo | $25/mo | $22/mo |
| Add'l R&A block (25) | $75/mo | $75/mo | $75/mo |
| Document storage | 10 GB | 50 GB | 200 GB |
| AI · BYOK | $49/mo | $49/mo | Included |
| AI · Managed | $39/mo | $79/mo | $149/mo |
| Support | Email · 48h | Email · 24h | Email + scheduled calls |
| Implementation | Self-serve | Self-serve + 2h call | Guided 4h setup |
Annual billing saves 17%. Modules are identical at every tier — Documents, NCRs, Audits, Risk, FMEA, JHA, MOC, Training, Meetings, Compliance Mapping, Gap Analysis, Suppliers, Clients.
Starter caps at 10 Full users; Professional at 30. The cap is on Full users only — R&A users don't count. So a 200-person plant on Professional with 30 Full users (the QMS team plus everyone who approves workflows) and 175 R&A users is inside the cap.
The two seat types
The whole point of the seat model is that QMS work has two audiences with very different needs.
Full user — 1× against your tier inclusion
Everyone who acts on the system. Quality managers, engineers, auditors, document authors, NCR investigators, MOC owners — and anyone who approves workflows or e-signs as part of their authority (department heads, plant managers, customer-liaison directors). They get the complete app — every module, every action, every screen.
If a person clicks Approve on a document, MOC, or exemption, they're a Full user. There is no half-rate seat for "approval only" — by design, so the seat model stays simple and the line between "active QMS user" and "passive consumer" is clean.
Read & Acknowledge — $3/user/month
Production workers, line operators, technicians, customer-service reps — anyone who needs to read distributed documents and complete assigned training but never edits or approves anything. The R&A surface is the full Training Hub: document acknowledgements with e-signature, internal courses with quizzes and retrain intervals, and external xAPI completions pushed from your corporate LMS — all on the same page, all on the audit trail.
R&A users are billed in blocks of 25 at $75/month per block. They don't count toward the Full-user cap. Most plants have far more R&A users than Full users — often 5–10× more. That's the math that makes whole-workforce training rollout actually pencil out.
What R&A users can do is described in the Read & Acknowledge users article.
Worked example — a 200-employee manufacturer
Imagine a typical mid-size plant: 200 people on the floor and in the offices, ISO 9001 certified, supplier audits and customer audits both common.
The team's actual QMS roles:
| Role | Headcount | Seat type |
|---|---|---|
| Quality manager + 4 QA engineers | 5 | Full |
| Engineering managers | 4 | Full |
| Auditors (3 lead, 5 internal) | 8 | Full |
| Document owners across departments | 13 | Full |
| Department heads who approve workflows | 5 | Full |
| Production / shop-floor / customer service | 165 | R&A |
| Total Full users | 35 |
Tier choice: 35 Full users exceeds the Professional cap of 30, so this plant goes on Business.
Monthly bill on Business:
| Line | Cost |
|---|---|
| Business base (40 Full + 500 R&A included — no add-ons needed) | $999 |
| AI · BYOK | Included |
| Total | $999/mo |
If the team can consolidate to 30 Full users — say, having one approver per department instead of two — they fit Professional:
Same plant on Professional with 30 Full + 165 R&A:
| Line | Cost |
|---|---|
| Professional base (30 Full + 100 R&A included) | $499 |
| 65 extra R&A users (3 blocks × $75) | $225 |
| AI · Managed (typical for first year) | $79 |
| Total | $803/mo |
Both work. Business gives unlimited Full-user headroom and AI BYOK included; Professional saves ~$200/month if the team can keep Full users to 30 or fewer.
A comparable legacy eQMS, charged at full-user rates for every employee, is typically $13,000+/month for the same 200 people. The seat-model math is most of why QFormance lands where it lands.
When to upgrade
Three reasons people move tiers:
- You hit the full-user cap. New hires bring you past 10 (Starter) or 30 (Professional) weighted full users. The system asks for the upgrade in-app.
- Storage runs out. 10 GB / 50 GB / 200 GB. PDFs, photos in NCRs, audit evidence — these add up. Add storage blocks (+50 GB / +200 GB / +1 TB) without upgrading the whole tier if you're otherwise fine.
- AI moves from try-it to depend-on-it. Most teams start on Managed AI ($39/$79/$149) and move to BYOK once usage stabilises. On Business, BYOK is included.
Upgrades and downgrades prorate immediately — no contract penalty, no waiting for the renewal.