Martech, explained · Buying and running · 2:04
What does a CDP cost?
CDP pricing: what the meter counts, where it moves, and how to read a quote
The short answer
CDP pricing follows a meter, not a price list. Packaged CDPs price the data you hold: profiles, events, monthly active people and destinations. Engagement platforms price actions, like messages sent. In a composable stack the license shrinks and the meter moves to warehouse compute and synced rows. Every pricing model hides a workload; the question is who carries it.
Questions this answers
What do CDPs charge for?
The data you hold: the profiles you store, the events you collect, the people active this month and the destinations you connect, plus modules such as identity or AI on top.
Is a composable CDP cheaper?
The license gets smaller, but every segment refresh is warehouse compute, and the tools around it price per connection or per synced row. Refresh one segment every hour and that is twenty-four meters running a day.
What does real time cost?
Streaming runs, and bills, whether a campaign uses it or not. Name the moment you need; fifteen minutes is often enough, and sometimes daily is.
How should you read a CDP quote?
Backwards. Find the meter that drives the total, get its definition in writing, model your peaks rather than your averages, and ask for headroom up front.
Transcript
Every chapter as text. Click a time to play the film from there.
0:00 Intro
Every vendor says you only pay for what you use. The question is what they mean by use.
0:10 Quick key
Quick key first. Boxes are tools, lines are integrations, and the dots are your data moving. Today, each of them can carry a price.
0:22 What a CDP charges for
A packaged CDP prices the data you hold. The profiles you store, the events you collect, the people who were active this month, the destinations you connect… and modules like identity or AI on top.
0:37 What an engagement platform charges for
Engagement platforms price the actions you take instead. Messages sent, data points written, or a pool of credits you spend across features.
So the same word, usage, means data on one invoice and messages on the other.
0:54 Composable: the meter moves
In a composable stack, the licence gets smaller, and the meter moves to your warehouse. Every audience refresh is compute, and the tools around it usually price per connection, or by the rows they sync.
Refresh one audience every hour, and that's twenty-four meters running a day. And the work moves in-house too: someone has to keep the wiring alive.
1:18 The price of real time
Speed has a price as well. Streaming runs, and bills, whether a campaign is using it or not. Name the moment you need. Fifteen minutes is often enough, and sometimes daily is.
1:32 Reading a quote
When a quote arrives, read it backwards. Find the meter that drives the total, get its definition in writing, and model your peaks, not your averages.
And ask for headroom up front, because this year's overage tends to become next year's price floor.
1:50 Learn more
Learn more at Martech Stack Builder, or build your own stack there, for free.
Every pricing model hides a workload. The question is who carries it.
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The articles this film is drawn from.