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Aug 29, 2023 | 5 minute read
written by Hannah Jarrett
When I, like many others, make an important purchase, especially one that involves a long-term commitment and represents a high percentage of my budget, I am thorough. Whether investing in a car, phone, or expensive winter coat – I do my research. Usually that includes reading reviews, talking to friends and experts, and understanding the financial commitment – the price!
Commerce buyers mirror my approach. When I poll our business development team it is the top question they receive on their introductory calls with brands. Investing in new commerce solutions is a big deal for buyers both in terms of their companies’ ability to hit revenue targets in coming years and their own professional growth. Nobody wants to be the VP of eCommerce or CTO who advocates for a costly commerce project only to miss ROI targets.
Unfortunately, most enterprise commerce vendors don’t share their pricing until you take several meetings with them. This process can feel dated and frustrating when you just want to understand if you can afford the investment or not. But on the flip side, it’s often very hard for vendors (like us) to provide pricing without understanding your business (goals, requirements, size).
That is exactly why I am writing this blog post. Although I can’t give you an exact number, this post will help you better understand how much Elastic Path products cost and what you need to consider when thinking about the total investment.
“It depends”. That is the simplest (and most frustrating) way to answer the question “How much does it cost?”
A useful analogy that helps to explain this is making dinner. How much will it cost to make dinner? The investment to put a meal on the table depends on the outcome you seek.
If you want something simple and don’t care about nutrition or flavor profile – a cup of ramen or a bologna sandwich are low-cost ways to make a meal. Did you make dinner? Yes. Was it less than $5? Yes. Was it ready in 3 minutes? Yes.
However, let’s say you want something a bit more nutritious and delicious made with all local ingredients – you’ll need grass-fed beef, farmer’s market vegetables, handmade pasta and cheese from your local Italian market, and bread from the neighborhood bakery. Did you make dinner? Yes. Was it less than $5? No, it cost you $50 or more but it was delicious and supported your local community. It also took more time to shop and prepare than the bologna.
In these two scenarios both chefs put a meal on the table, but their goals were completely different, meaning their cost was as well.
Commerce is the same. The cost of Elastic Path will depend on your goals and requirements. We have different products that solve different problems – and different ways those products are priced depending on usage.
Elastic Path is a composable commerce company, meaning our customers compose their commerce solution from multiple different best-of-breed vendors. Unlike other vendors, our offering is NOT a platform. Instead, we offer a family of products that work seamlessly together but are completely modular and integrate with all of the other leading commerce products in the market. This differentiated approach empowers brands to Unplatform™, unleashing their ability to solve initiative-specific problems instead of taking on massive replatform projects.
How our customers purchase and implement is directly tied to the problems they are trying to solve in their business. Some of our customers bundle all products together and some purchase one product and expand over time as their business needs change. This flexibility means we do not have a standard price.
All pricing includes access to a dedicated CSM, business user tooling and APIs, developer tooling, free education and training, and robust documentation.
Bundling our product offering is a great fit if you are looking to replace your existing commerce tech stack. This option includes Product Experience Manager, Composer, CX Studio, and our core commerce services such as cart, checkout, orders, inventory, etc. It is based on a percentage of GMV.
Many customers are looking to tackle a specific initiative versus a fully technology transformation. For those folks we offer standalone products with their own pricing models
Product Experience Manager
CX Studio
Composer
Payments
You may be wondering, what about other costs? Well, similarly, that just depends on your goals and project scope. Some common additional expenses include:
If you’ve made it to the end of this post, you will understand that the cost of software is like the cost of making a meal – it just depends on what you want!
Our sales team at Elastic Path is well versed in making a solution recommendation and providing pricing for different types of requirements and goals. Get in touch today to receive a personalized estimate for your commerce project.
Start building the commerce experience your unique business needs with Elastic Path.