Recognized as one of the leading CMS solutions on the market, Contentful enables omnichannel content delivery for some of the largest consumer-facing brands across the globe, including household names such as IKEA, Spotify and Urban Outfitters. If you’re therefore looking for a new headless content management platform, it could well be the one to beat.
As with any new SaaS application, however, you’ll want to ensure you’re getting the best possible deal.
After all, it’s not just the number of SaaS tools that are increasing – our data indicates that the average SaaS stack is growing by 18% year-on-year – but the cost of these tools are also rising substantially and at a rate that far outpaces general market inflation.
So, the question is, how much does a Contentful subscription cost? And what are your options for securing a discount?
Here’s everything you need to know about Contentful pricing.
How much does Contentful cost?
If you’re looking for basic access to Contentful, it’s worth knowing that the vendor does in fact operate a freemium model. If, however, you’re wanting more comprehensive access to its feature set, then one of its two paid plans will likely be a better fit.
Here’s the thing though – while pricing is publicly available for Contentful’s Basic plan, the same can’t be said for its enterprise-level Premium plan. But while this is frustratingly the norm – the vast majority of software providers obscure enterprise price points – it’s also a marker of the wider challenge of pricing transparency across the software industry.
After all, without any frame of reference on pricing, it can be impossible to know if you’re being quoted a fair deal, let alone the best possible deal. And it’s partly why as many as 90% of companies are overpaying for their software by an average of 26%.
Before we jump to the solution though – because there is a solution to finding out how much you can expect to pay – it’s worth understanding which of Contentful’s pricing models you’ll be negotiating on.
Contentful pricing model
Contenful’s three pricing plans each come with an allocation of ‘spaces’, which allow users to edit content, build and install apps, and introduce additional features to their projects using their programming language of choice.
While each plan – including Contenful Free – comes with at least one Intro space that enables basic functionality, paying customers can upgrade to a larger and more feature-rich space for an additional fee. As an example, Basic plan users can upgrade to a Medium space for an additional $350 per month, which would more than double the total monthly fee of $300 to $650. Premium subscribers on the other hand can upgrade to either a Medium, Large or even bigger Premium space, however the price for this isn’t made publicly available.
So, what else is worth knowing about each tier type?
Free
Contentful’s free plan can be used by up to five editing users for basic content management. Users can enjoy four standard roles, two locales, community-based support, and one free Intro space. Given it’s limited functionality, it’s only really recommended for developers and marketers building personal projects.
Basic
Contentful’s standard paid plan, Basic, is priced at $300 per month and is suitable for teams of up to 20 users. Like the free version, Basic includes one Intro space, but it also allows users to upgrade their space limits for an additional fee, and supports more API calls and asset upload sizes.
Premium
The enterprise-level plan is quote-based and priced depending on resources such as API requests, storage space and seat count. Premium supports larger organizations in building scaled experiences with thousands of editors. The plan includes a more advanced feature set and two Intro space licenses, with upgrades available to Medium, Large or bigger Premium spaces for additional fees.
But the question remains unanswered – how much can you expect to pay for Contentful enterprise-level pricing?
Discover what other companies are paying for Contentful enterprise
Lack of vendor pricing transparency, particularly around enterprise-level pricing, can make it incredibly difficult to know how good of a deal you’re getting.
With the right intel, however, you can ensure you’re not being quoted more than you should be.
So, how do you obtain this intel?
Well, your first option is to search online for accounts of what other users are paying.
One Reddit user on this thread claims their team pays in the region of $2,500 per month for a Contentful subscription, a significant jump in price over the monthly cost of a Basic plan. If this figure is anything to go by, an enterprise-level plan could set your organization back a cool $30,000 per year.
Elsewhere, however, this pricing article suggests that Contentful enterprise pricing starts at ~$4,000 per month, which would translate to $48,000 per annum, at the very minimum.
So, what can we learn from these pricing claims?
Essentially, it’s that the price you’ll pay for a Contentful enterprise subscription will vary significantly according to your usage needs. While this approach to sourcing pricing information can provide a useful benchmark, the results are conflicting, and may also be outdated, despite having only been written in the past year or so.
So, is there a more reliable option for finding out what you might pay for your Contentful enterprise subscription?
Yes — by talking to Vertice. But we’ll get onto that shortly.
How to secure a Contentful discount
The information we’ve found online is useful for providing a frame of reference on what other companies pay for their Contentful subscription, but what we don’t know is whether they received a discounted rate or not.
This is where it’s vital to seek alternative pricing insights.
Our data tells us that providers in this SaaS category offer an average discount of 23.5% down from their listed pricing, indicating that it may be possible to secure a discount on a Contentful subscription. In fact, Contentful itself only has a medium pricing parity rating, which suggests that there is a degree of inconsistency across the prices that similar customers are paying.
But just how much of a discount you get on your Contentful price will come down to your negotiation strategy. Here are our top tips for success.
Commit to a multi-year plan
Contentful’s enterprise-level pricing edition, Premium, is billed on an annual basis. However, proposing to take on a longer-length commitment when negotiating with the vendor may prompt the representative to offer your organization a discounted rate.
According to our data, software vendors tend to offer an extra 5% discount to your price point per extra year that you sign on for. So, if you’re confident that Contentful will become an integral component of your SaaS stack over the years to come, inquiring about a multi-year subscription could provide significant long-term value.
Make competitor comparisons
Contentful is an undoubtedly impressive CMS platform, but it’s by no means the only solution in its category. One productive way to gain leverage in negotiations is to equip yourself with pricing insights for your vendor’s competitors — in this case, by seeking quotes from big-name content management providers like Umbraco or Webflow. These insights could be leveraged to incentivize a better deal from Contentful.
But it’s not just the upfront cost that you can negotiate with. You should also compare what Contentful’s competitors offer in terms of their other contract conditions, such as customer support and renewal clauses. Leveraging the full breadth of terms puts you in a better position to negotiate a deal that is bespoke to your business needs — and potentially at a discounted price.
Leverage reliable pricing benchmarks
Competitor comparisons are certainly helpful, but the best kind of leverage is intel into what other companies similar to your own are paying for their subscriptions. When you have access to this data, software providers are more likely to match or beat any discounted price points that have been offered to your peers.
However, as we’ve discussed, it can be challenging to source this information online. And even if you find any concrete figures, these are often still contradictory and unreliable. Instead, your best course of action is to talk to Vertice for reliable and accurate price benchmarking data.
Manage your procurement efficiently with Vertice
Vertice has access to detailed transactional data from over 16,000 software vendors, positioned across every vertical. So, when it comes time to purchase or renew a contract for your organization, we can leverage this exclusive data to secure you the best possible deal on your subscription.
Plus, we’ll even handle the negotiation process for you, saving you the time and energy spent to efficiently procure new SaaS contracts, whether it’s Contentful or another tool for your stack.
See for yourself how much you could be saving on your annual SaaS spend with a free cost-savings analysis, or take a look through our vendor database for more exclusive pricing intel on your providers of choice.
