Ask any enterprise software buyer, and they’ll tell you SaaS pricing models are a mess. And CMS pricing models? For the most part, they are a full-blown cluster.
This is coming from someone who’s been in and out of the CMS world for the past 15 years at places like Adobe, Acquia, and dotCMS. I’ve spent time as an enterprise seller, hearing direct feedback from customers, in company leadership meetings as the GTM leader, and I’ve led many discussions with analysts, capturing their market perspective on how CMS platforms are priced and packaged.
I still sometimes scratch my head when I’m exposed to pricing models. This article is designed to explain why CMS pricing is so complicated and how to evaluate and negotiate it.
Why are CMS pricing models so complicated?
The truth is that the complexity of CMS pricing is a reflection of the complexity of the offering. What seems simple (managing content and deploying content) has a lot of moving pieces that impact the cost.
The opaqueness often stems from a vendor's need to balance their own costs with the value they provide to customers. First, it is important to understand the fundamental components of an enterprise CMS to reveal why pricing isn't as straightforward as it seems. Then, when you break down the "full stack" of technology that goes into a great CMS, you can see how vendors use a blend of fixed and variable costs to build their pricing models.
What goes into the making of a great CMS?
Most customers decide to migrate to a new platform because they have a problem. The problem usually lands within the bounds of they can’t get content live quickly enough and/or the website isn’t performant.
Behind this statement, there are a myriad of symptoms that ladder up to the problem. Symptoms can include: authoring experience is clunky, the content can’t be reused across the organization, it’s difficult to deploy content on various channels, the content isn’t personalized, etc.
The reason there are so many symptoms is that the components of an enterprise CMS aren’t as simple as they may appear. It’s more than you see in the demo. It’s not only a page builder, a set of workflows, and an A/B testing module. There is a full stack of technology that powers the application layer that’s accessed by the end user. To make the right CMS choice and understand what you’re buying, it’s helpful to know what’s under the hood.
Whether CMS providers expose these layers or not, here is what goes into an Enterprise CMS:
Infrastructure - the CMS needs to be powered by performant servers
Storage - the content that lives in the CMS needs to be housed in a secure, scalable database
Development - a unique set of environments needs to be provisioned to write code, test the code, and deploy it into production
Security and performance - adjacent technology needs to be configured to ensure the content that lives on your site renders quickly and your site doesn’t get hacked (in this case, I’m referring to a CDN and a WAF)
Product support - this is the team that helps if the product isn’t performing as expected, a group of engineers who can troubleshoot issues that come up
Account support - this is the team that helps you make strategic decisions on how to use the product; they are your internal advocate and relationship manager
Application code - this is the development that goes into the CMS application itself. Examples would be improved content workflows, a new module like Content Analytics, or a pre-built integration to a commerce system
Now that you have a sense of the “full stack,” here is where it gets interesting.
Understanding the fixed and variable costs for CMS providers:
The secret most CMS insiders know is that layers 1-6 have hard, continuous costs associated with them. As a result, CMS providers use a cost-plus model to build a scalable business. For example, if a customer increases the traffic on their site, more servers are needed. A portion of that cost is absorbed by the CMS provider, and the remainder is shouldered by the client. Given it’s a cost-plus model, if CMS providers priced on components 1-6 alone, it would be a race to the bottom.
For this reason, most CMS vendors encourage clients to focus on a volume metric when presenting the price. The reason? The volume metric is tied to the usage of the application, which has the highest margins of any component within the CMS. The volume metric could be the number of sites, content types, API calls, etc., and it will vary depending on the deployment model (headless or traditional).
The reason most CMS vendors start with that metric, outside of it being the highest margin, is that it’s a rational argument for buyers. 99% of buyers inherently agree that if you deploy more content, you should pay more. The big question is how much more? It is really dependent on the impact of your content or the site you are deploying.
Finally, one item to ask about, that’s critical: how was the CMS originally architected? It’s helpful to know if it is built to manage multi-channel content, multi-brand content, internal content, etc. It may be some combination, but most have a primary and secondary focus but market themselves for all content use cases. The core architecture will have an impact on each of the cost components and the intended results that the CMS should provide.
An example - if a headless CMS was created to deploy multi-channel content but didn’t take into account the functionality to manage multiple digital properties, the costs to configure, support, and deploy the CMS will be higher.
How to negotiate with a CMS provider
Knowing that enterprise CMS providers have a blended pricing model: cost-plus pricing in their core services (1-6) and value pricing for the application (7), the question really comes down to what volume am I receiving for what price? Knowing the baseline cost is generally the same, it comes down to the use case it’s designed for and the associated costs per content type, site, API call, or content item.
My recommendation:
Ask for comparable clients with your use case. If you’re a healthcare provider with 50 sites, what does a comparable deployment look like, and what specific features do they utilize?
Ask for the same capacity in terms of servers, bandwidth, development environments, SLA, and support.
Why is this important? It provides an apples-to-apples comparison. Otherwise, you may have one vendor with 10 content types and 6M API calls and another with 20 content types and 2M API calls, making it difficult to evaluate whether you’re getting a good deal or not.
If the proper scoping is done, you should be able to get comparable tiers for components 1-6.
If the CMS provider doesn’t expose those layers in the pricing, know they are being bundled into the overall cost somewhere.
Once you have the items above, ask for the volume of content types or sites that are included.
Finally, make sure you have a grid for overages and add-ons.
At this point, you can begin to map out the price per content type or price per site.
How to know if you got a great deal
The best partnerships are the ones where the client and the provider agree on terms that are favorable but not perfect for either side. They are reflective of a relationship where common goals and transparency are the foundation for success. They are aligned on the use case(s) they are solving for.
With that said, often buyers have been through an experience where they have concerns around their purchase price due to not understanding the unit economics for the CMS provider. Below are a few metrics you can use to feel confident in your decision:
Cost per unit - you have an efficient “cost per site” or “cost per content type,” one that doesn’t hinder your business as you scale.
Capacity - You have more content types or sites than you initially requested, providing plenty of room for growth. You don’t have to worry about meeting your limits anytime soon.
Transparency - first and foremost, you have asked and know EVERY incremental cost. You know what triggers those incremental costs and why.
Future costs - you have an overage grid that’s agreed to, you know what modules are add-ons, you have the YOY index spelled out in the contract, and you know support costs if you need to move to another tier.
Executive Sponsorship - you have commitment from multiple levels within the organization that you’ll be supported. You need an escalation point if you’re running a mission-critical website or application.
At dotCMS, we have always taken a balanced, efficient approach to pricing. We’ve had to. Our growth hasn’t been funded by large capital investments, which come with the weight of growth at all costs. Our growth has been driven by customers who have scaled with us over 3, 5, or 10 years. We’ve earned their trust (and budget), one project at a time.
Based on our business model, we provide generous allotments of “capacity” to allow organizations to grow without being concerned about hidden incremental costs. We offer an attractive entry price to launch your first few experiences on dotCMS, along with a pricing model that scales to support a multitude of digital experiences. We are significantly less than the likes of Adobe, and we provide the enterprise-grade quality you can’t find with an open-source platform. We provide significantly more value, at a comparable price point, to “the next era” of headless CMS platforms and a better total cost of ownership than an open-source CMS (think WordPress).
Finally, we understand that a system that works is what you’re looking for. It’s why we provide a comprehensive solution that can be deployed in a variety of models on various cloud platforms. We have a world-class customer experience and support team, as well as a leadership team that actively engages in customer conversations.
To receive a quote on your project and to learn how dotCMS can help power your digital content, please reach out to our team.