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Gainsight has introduced value-based pricing for Gainsight CS, replacing seat-based pricing with a model tied to annual recurring revenue and the number of customers it manages.
The move marks a shift in how Gainsight charges for customer success software as AI agents take on work previously handled by staff.
Alongside the pricing change, Gainsight said its AI-native services business, Atlas, is now managing more than USD $75 million in customer annual recurring revenue for long-tail renewals and has completed more than 7,000 agentic interactions.
The new pricing structure will be available next year. It will include Staircase AI within Gainsight CS and will not charge customers for access to Model Context Protocol, or MCP.
Gainsight presented the change as a response to a broader shift in post-sale software teams, where AI agents and employees increasingly share customer-facing work. Under the previous model, vendors typically charged according to the number of named users or seats.
Chief Executive Officer Chuck Ganapathi said the company no longer views that approach as suited to the way retention teams operate.
"Retention is a shared objective and should be treated as a team sport," said Chuck Ganapathi, Chief Executive Officer of Gainsight.
"Any human or agent that touches the customer - Sales, Product, Services, FDEs, Marketing - needs the same customer context expected in Customer Success. Now that agents and people share the work, charging by the seat no longer fits. We are giving customers new ways to buy and access Gainsight," Ganapathi said.
Atlas growth
Atlas was introduced in May as Gainsight's AI-native services business. It combines AI agents with Renewal Agent Managers to handle renewals for long-tail customer accounts that often lack a dedicated Customer Success Manager.
According to Gainsight, the agents are used for personalisation and scale, while human managers step in when judgement is needed. The business is also part of Gainsight's broader push to take more direct responsibility for customer retention outcomes.
The latest update points to early customer uptake, at least by Gainsight's own measures. More than USD $75 million in annual recurring revenue under management indicates the contract base handled through Atlas, while the 7,000 agentic interactions figure points to operational activity within the service.
Gainsight CS's new pricing model extends the three-part commercial structure outlined earlier this year. Customers that want to build their own AI tools can connect agents to Gainsight through MCP at no added charge. Those that prefer packaged software can buy Gainsight CS with Staircase AI included. Customers who want outsourced support can work with Atlas under results-based contracts.
Product update
Gainsight also said Agent Studio has entered beta. The tool sits inside Gainsight CS and is designed as a workspace where customer success teams can describe workflows in plain language and reuse them across a team.
According to Gainsight, beta users can turn repeated tasks into reusable skills. Administrators can define standard skills for a business, while individual Customer Success Managers can create their own. Gainsight gives the example of a nightly account briefing workflow that prepares staff for the day ahead and flags at-risk accounts.
Agent Studio can also carry out actions inside Gainsight for user review, such as closing a call to action or updating a success plan. It can also be used to build dashboards, page layouts and custom success plans through plain-language instructions.
On governance, Gainsight said users must approve every action before it happens and that existing permissions and security controls remain in place. Administrators manage MCP connections, access and token usage at the user level.
Gainsight also announced updates across Gainsight CS, Staircase AI, Customer Communities, Skilljar and Product Experience. It did not provide further detail in the main announcement, but positioned the releases as part of a broader update to its retention software portfolio.
Gainsight sells software companies use to manage customer onboarding, adoption, learning, community engagement, and renewal. It says more than 2,000 companies use its applications and AI agents.
The pricing change is notable because seat-based charging has long been a core feature of software-as-a-service business models. By tying pricing instead to customer annual recurring revenue and account volumes managed through the platform, Gainsight is aligning its commercial model more closely with the outcomes and workloads it says customers now prioritise.