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Intake tier gating

Intake tier gating is the packaging pattern in which a legal software vendor advertises a low entry price and places the client intake capability above it, on a higher plan, behind a paid add-on, or behind a sales conversation, so that the advertised entry price is not the price of a configuration that performs intake.

The term matters because of which number travels. The entry price is the figure that reaches comparison articles, vendor listicles and budget conversations. Intake is the capability being shopped for. When the two are on different tiers, the gap is invisible until a demo or a quote.

The shapes this pattern takes

One captured pricing page shows all three named in the definition above. Clio's published plan comparison lists online client intake forms as not available on the entry plan, as requiring a sales conversation on the middle plans, and as included only on the highest plan, against a published entry price of 49 US dollars per user per month across four plans. Its intake and CRM product is stated as included in the Elite plans and available as a paid add-on for Core and Signature. The add-on price is not published, so the middle-tier cost of intake is not derivable from the page at all.

A fourth shape is not about tiers. Gavel attaches a monthly session allowance to each published plan, the entry Lite plan listing 100 sessions a month, and the allowances rise with the plan. Gavel also states that Lite and Standard subscribers must upgrade before they can add builders or organizational users, and that higher plans are billed a monthly overage for seats above their allowance. For a firm with high inbound volume, an allowance and a seat rule constrain intake capacity independently of the headline price, and the captured pricing page does not define what a session is.

The instances this research documented

Four products are separately documented as placing an intake capability above their entry tier, each read off that vendor's own dated pricing page. What each of those four observations actually establishes differs, which is the subject of the next section.

  • Clio. Online client intake forms unavailable on the entry plan, included only on the highest.
  • CASEpeer. The CasePeer Intake Portal is stated as part of the Advanced package, its highest published tier, which is 149 dollars per user per month against a Basic tier of 79.
  • MyCase. Client intake forms and legal CRM listed as a feature of the Pro plan rather than the entry Basic plan.
  • PracticePanther. Intake forms listed in the BUSINESS plan, the third of four published plans.

Why this is four observations and not a rate

This section is the reason the term is worth defining carefully rather than repeating. An earlier version of this research computed a four-of-four ratio from those instances and recorded it as a pattern claim. It was retired on review, for two reasons that both still apply to anyone tempted to state the same thing.

The first is representativeness. Four products are not a sample of the market, and the products that could be counted are exactly the products that publish a tiered feature table locating intake. Six of the core products in this research captured a pricing page carrying no public figures at all, so their packaging cannot be placed on this axis in either direction. Three of the six are described below as examples; the other three are Law Ruler, Lead Docket and CloudLex, whose captured pricing pages carry no figure either. Lawmatics publishes no list pricing and offers tailor-made plans quoted after a qualification step. Filevine publishes no list pricing and directs buyers to its sales team for a tailored plan. SimplyConvert presents a pricing page framed around firm workflow rather than published rates. And for Captorra, a dated search of the vendor's own domain returned no pricing results at capture time, which is an audited absence on that date rather than proof that no pricing exists.

The second is input comparability, and it is the sharper one. The CASEpeer observation establishes that a product named the Intake Portal sits on the highest tier. It does not establish that the lower tiers perform no intake. Counting it alongside a plan table that marks intake forms explicitly unavailable on the entry plan treats two different kinds of evidence as one.

So the defensible statement is four separately documented placements, each attributed to one vendor's dated page. Not a proportion, not a market rate, and not a claim about any product whose packaging is not public.

The costs the entry price also omits

Two further costs appear in the captured buyer accounts, and no captured pricing page attaches an amount to either. Each is a single account and is written here as one.

A firm beginning implementation reports being told by its assigned product manager that setup might take up to three months, with a setup fee on top of the base subscription cost. That is the firm relaying what it was told at the start, not a report of what happened. One captured pricing page states the opposite of a setup fee: CASEpeer's page says no long-term contract or setup fee is required.

A practitioner states that the value of a configurable intake automation product depends on someone at the firm decomposing every firm process into manageable steps and communicating them to the vendor, on the reasoning that the vendor cannot automate what it does not know can be automated. That is internal analyst time, spent before configuration begins, and it falls on the buyer.

One buyer noticed, which is not the same as buyers minding

A firm already standardised on one vendor's practice management product reports irritation at having to pay separately for intake, notes that a competing product presents both capabilities in a single application, and states that switching had become hard because the firm was already set up.

That is one pseudonymous account in a materially old discussion. It is recorded because the difference between no corroborating buyer and one is the difference between an inference about what buyers would care about and an observation that at least one did. It is also why this research files intake tier gating as a packaging framework rather than as a buyer pain point: one irritated buyer is corroboration, not prevalence.

What this evidence does not establish

It does not establish that any vendor is behaving improperly, that gated intake performs worse than bundled intake, or that the pattern holds across products whose pricing is not public. Every packaging observation here is a vendor self-description read off an official pricing page on a dated snapshot, with no independent verification and no quoted price obtained. No proportion, share or market rate is available from this evidence and none is offered. Packaging is the most volatile commercial surface a vendor has, so any of these placements can change between the capture date and the day you read this, and the page a buyer should act on is the vendor's current one.

Every source behind this page was captured between and . Each statement names the party that published it, and the claim record behind each one carries that source's own capture date. Vendor packaging and pricing change without notice, so a figure here is what that page said on the date it was read and not what it says today.

Legal intake software, for the verified product set and the per-product pricing detail. Methodology, for what counts as a source here and how figures are verified.

Nothing on this page is legal advice, and no price here should be relied on without a current quote from the vendor.