Not only has security platform, Splunk, amassed an impressive user base including 92 companies on the Fortune 100 list, but it is also consecutively ranked first for market share in Gartner’s report of ITOM Performance Analysis Software and AIOps, ITIM and Other Monitoring Tools subsegments.
It therefore goes without saying that the tool is a widely adopted piece of software in tech stacks. The question is, has it earned a place in your own portfolio?
While there are many considerations to be taken into account when purchasing a new SaaS app, price remains an influential factor. Now more than ever thanks to soaring inflation rates.
Which then raises the question of just how much Splunk costs. And whether it’s possible to get a discount.
Here’s everything you need to know.
How much does Splunk cost?
While Splunk’s pricing is quote-based, making the company one of the 55% of software vendors choosing not to publicly list its costs, the pricing page does indicate that there are four different plans to choose from, each with its own pricing model.
Splunk pricing plans
In its full pricing brochure, the vendor explains that the main Splunk Cloud Platform subscription can be priced in one of three different ways. Each pricing program is suitable for a different set of use cases, and which of the options that the sales team recommend to a user will depend on their exact needs.
Here’s a brief summary of each program.
Workload
Workload is explained as “the most effective and efficient” way to use Splunk products. Pricing for this plan is a value-oriented metric determined by search activity, making it the best fit for organizations looking to tie their spending to the value obtained from a given product. Workload gives you complete control over data usage and infrastructure, allowing you to explore multiple use cases and scale when necessary.
Entity
Entity pricing is available for Splunk IT, Security and Observability clouds, providing clear and predictable pricing which scales with business outcomes. Total cost is based on the number of hosts (protected devices) using Splunk observability products. Entity is the recommended plan for businesses looking to apply Splunk to defined security, ITOps and DevOps use cases.
Ingest
Ingest is the traditional volume-based pricing plan, considered Splunk’s ‘legacy metric’. Ingest allows you to add users and scale activity for free. The amount of data ingested by Splunk products each day is the primary factor that determines cost.
Splunk Enterprise pricing
Ultimately, the price you’ll pay for Splunk products each month will depend on your search activity and the type of pricing program that you opt for. But what is the average company paying for an enterprise-level plan?
While Splunk itself doesn’t offer any specific pricing insights, it’s still possible to get a frame of reference on pricing for this plan type.
One way is by scouring online forums and review sites.
As an example, an article on SaaSworthy reports that Splunk Enterprise pricing starts at $150 per ingested GB of data per month.
Elsewhere, Capterra corroborated this figure, stating that the annual cost of a Splunk Enterprise plan starts at $1,800.
Here’s the thing though – this only reflects the very lowest material cost that organizations will be charged for a plan and you can expect to pay significantly more for a high-usage subscription.
Plus, while this figure may provide you with a ballpark estimation, there’s no guarantee that this information is up-to-date or even accurate. For instance, neither of these two accounts of Splunk’s pricing takes the different pricing programs on offer into account, suggesting that they may reflect a legacy pricing system. In fact, another site that shared a similar price point to the two above also included pricing for Splunk ‘Light’, which stopped being made available back in 2020.
This illustrates the issue of pricing transparency in SaaS. While following a quote-based pricing model can help vendors to provide customers with bespoke pricing according to their needs, it leaves you on the back foot in figuring out the average price of each tool in your shortlist.
So, how can you find out the cost of a Splunk subscription without entering into a sales conversation with the vendor?
In short, with Vertice. We have pricing and discounting data from over 15,000 global SaaS vendors in our database, helping our clients to know exactly how much companies with similar profiles pay for their software subscriptions. But we’ll get to that shortly.
How to get a discount on Splunk pricing
The truth is, even if you were sure of exactly how much Splunk would quote you for a plan, these prices are rarely set in stone. Our data shows that among companies with similar usage needs, Splunk’s prices are fairly inconsistent, and there is a high possibility of users securing a discount.
In other words, you may be able to pay less for your subscription if you deploy the right software negotiation strategy.
The question is, what tactics should you use?
Here are our top recommendations.
Commit to a longer subscription period
Naturally, a recurring sale is good news for software vendors — so they might offer additional incentives if you sign on for a longer subscription term. However, you should only consider committing to a yearly or even multi-year agreement with a vendor if you’re confident that their tool will provide long-term value to your business.
Based on our data, we’ve found that providers will usually offer an additional 5% discount for each additional year of commitment from a user. So, signing on for longer subscriptions could yield more value across your entire software stack.
Leverage pricing benchmarks
While a longer subscription commitment can provide some leverage, it will only get you so far. The most powerful leverage that you can gain during negotiations is intel into what other companies similar to yours are paying. When you’re equipped with this data, vendors are more likely to match any contract terms or discounted price points that have been offered to your peers.
But as we’ve discussed, it can be challenging to source this information online — and even then, it may be unreliable. Your best bet to find reliable and accurate price benchmarking data is to talk to Vertice.
Streamline your software procurement with Vertice
At Vertice, we have access to exclusive pricing and discounting data from vendors across every software vertical. When it comes time to purchase or renew a contract for your organization, we can leverage these pricing benchmarks to secure you the best-value deal. What’s more, we’ll handle the entire process for you, saving you the time and manpower needed to procure and efficiently manage new SaaS.
See for yourself how much you could save with a cost-savings audit, or browse our extensive vendor database to access exclusive discounting insights for thousands of global software providers.
