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Stack Costs

What your stack costs, and when you have to say something about it

Spend, notice-by dates and the plan for the next negotiation, next to the diagram they belong to.

Open the Canvas See pricing

Costs and the one-pager on Consultant and up. Renewal dates and reminders on every plan.

The renewal nobody decided

A tool gets bought for a project. The project ends, its champion moves on, and the contract renews anyway. Nobody’s careless. The notice period is just shorter than a busy team’s memory.

The last day to give notice sits in a PDF nobody has opened since signing. (When did you last open yours?)

So the costs and the dates go where the stack already lives.

What each tool costs

Switch any stack from Canvas to Costs. Every tool gets a row with its yearly cost, billing, seats, paying department, renewal date and contracted price increase. Totals are kept per currency and never converted, because a converted number is a guess with a decimal point.

  • Tracked spend, off-the-books spend and seat utilisation
  • What unused seats would give back at the next renewal
  • Spend by department, one click to filter the table
  • A forecast of next year’s spend
The Costs view of one stack: $528k tracked a year, 56% seat utilisation, up to $135k recoverable at the next renewal, spend by department, and a row per tool with its annual cost, department, seats in use and renewal date

One renewal calendar

Every renewal sits on one 18-month timeline with its term, notice window and notice-by date. That’s the renewal date minus the notice period. Nothing clever. Contracts that renew on their own are marked, and below the timeline the same renewals are listed as overdue, next 30 days, next 90 days and later.

  • Reminders when the notice window opens, seven days before notice-by, and once if it passes
  • By email and in the app, by push on your phone, and in Slack on a team workspace, without the price
  • Mark one renewed, fix a date, or mute it
  • A calendar file for Outlook or Google Calendar
Costs → Renewals: every contract on one timeline from October 2026 to March 2028 with its term, notice window and notice-by date (Mailchimp in 2 days, Amplitude in 17, Braze in 32), and below it the renewals in the next 90 days, $56k a year, each with a Prepare negotiation button

Bring your budget file

The costs are probably already in a spreadsheet finance sent you. Import it as CSV or Excel. Nothing is saved until you’ve reviewed what it read for each tool, with every assumption flagged, such as which currency a bare number is in.

  • Reads 1.234,56 €, 1’234.56, USD 42,000, 42k, 3.5 mio and (1,200) as a credit
  • Amounts per month, year or seat; dates day or month first, month names in nine languages
  • From Excel, the number stored in the cell, not its formatting
The review step of a cost import: how the file was read (numbers written 1.234,56, dates day first, and the currency and period it had to assume), four vendors ready to update, and the rows that need a look, such as €95 per seat times 40 seats and a percentage that is not an amount

Walk into the negotiation with a plan

Every renewal row has a Prepare negotiation button. It builds a one-page plan: an opening ask, a settle point and a walk-away, each with its arithmetic and sources. The ladder is calculated, not generated. AI writes the talk track and can’t state a figure the calculation didn’t give it.

  • Longer terms and increase caps priced in; prepaying, volume and case studies as questions
  • Seats sized to real use, plus 10% headroom
  • Key dates, your vendor contact and the vendor’s fiscal year end
  • Print it, copy it, email it to yourself, or open it on your phone
The negotiation one-pager for the Braze renewal beside the stack: 32 days to decide, cancel by 15 Nov 2026, and a price ladder that opens at 95,707, settles at 96,694 and walks away at 103,600, with the arithmetic and its sources under each, and the two-year term switched on as a trade
The same Braze one-pager as a printed A4 page: the cancel-by date, the renewal date and the cost of doing nothing, the price ladder with its arithmetic, the trades, the questions to ask, the leverage and the vendor contact
The same plan, printed on one page

The method

Prepare a renewal negotiation by hand

Most renewals are negotiated down from the vendor’s number. This gives you your own number first, with the working beside it. About an hour per renewal.

  1. Write down what you pay and what you use

    Annual cost, billing, seats bought and seats used in the last 90 days. If nobody knows the seats used, that is your first question for the vendor.

  2. Work out the notice-by date

    Renewal date minus the contract’s notice period. The negotiation has to finish before that date, not before the renewal.

  3. Size the seats to real use

    Seats used plus about 10% headroom, priced at today’s rate. The gap to what you pay now is where the conversation starts.

  4. Build a three-rung price ladder

    An opening ask, a settle point and a walk-away, each with its arithmetic. A number you cannot explain is one you will give up in the first call.

  5. Decide what you can trade

    A longer term or an increase cap can be priced, so put them on the ladder. Prepaying, volume or a case study cannot, so write them down as questions.

Worked example Illustrative

A marketing automation renewal: 120 seats at $800 each, 90-day notice period.

Annual cost today $96,000
Seats used / bought 74 / 120
Right-sized seats (used + 10%) 82
Right-sized cost at today’s price $65,600
Recoverable before any discount $30,400

Reading it: The opening ask starts from $65,600, not from a percentage off $96,000. A 15% discount on 120 seats still pays for 38 seats nobody uses.

The shortcut: The Costs view keeps seats, costs and notice-by dates in one list, and the negotiation one-pager builds the step 4 ladder with the working shown.

The argument behind this

The Martech contracts dates and rights

The dates and rights in a martech contract that a renewal calendar has to catch.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which plan includes Stack Costs?
The Costs view, the renewal calendar, cost import and the negotiation one-pager are on Consultant ($99 a month), Agency, Team and Enterprise. Renewal dates, reminder emails and the calendar download are on every plan, Free included.
Does it convert currencies?
Each total stays in the currency you entered it in, so a stack that pays in euros and dollars shows two totals.
Does the AI make up the numbers on the negotiation one-pager?
The ladder, the trades and the seat sizing are calculated from the stack’s costs, seats and dates. The AI only writes the talk track, can’t state a figure the calculation didn’t give it, and counts against your monthly AI allowance.
Can it sync with a Google Sheet?
There’s no sync. Export the sheet as CSV or Excel and import that file.
How does it work with uploaded contracts?
On Enterprise, an uploaded agreement’s renewal date and notice period are the dates the calendar uses. The stack’s Details view lists every agreement by vendor with its notice-by date.
Can I use it on my phone?
Yes. The Renewals tab lists every renewal by notice date, and the one-pager opens there on the same plan it needs on desktop.

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On your phone

Renewals by notice date and the negotiation one-pager, away from your desk.

Learn more

See what your stack costs

Map the stack, add what each tool costs and when it renews, and plan the next negotiation on one page.

Open the Canvas See pricing

No credit card required. Free plan available.