Embedded Analytics: How To Choose The Right Pricing Model

When you’re in the market for an embedded analytics solution, one of the obvious considerations is pricing. Regardless of whether you plan to embed analytics into a software product, or roll out analytics across a ten-thousand-strong enterprise as well as to your business partners, finding an analytics solution with a pricing model to suit your needs is paramount. But it’s a little more complex than; which one’s the cheapest or the best value for money.

Step 1: Consider Your Analytics Needs

To understand which platform is the right one, you need to assess what you want out of it. If you’re a small company looking for an analytics tool for internal collaboration, your needs will likely differ from that of a software company developing a new application with embedded analytics accessible to end users. Understanding your needs and how these translate into costs is a crucial first step.

Step 2: Understand the Different Pricing Models

Embedded analytics providers come with various pricing strategies, and understanding these is key to evaluating what will suit you the best. Let’s take a look at the different pricing models and when might be the right time to choose them.

Pricing per seat

Due to its simplicity, seat-based (or user-based) pricing is one of the most popular pricing models. Companies charge customers based on the number of users they have on their accounts. The quoted price stipulates that a specific number of users will be able to use the embedded analytics platform. For example, the cost might be $8 for a single account and $70 for ten users on the account.

A huge advantage of this is that you can know the exact sum you will pay each month – there won’t be any surprises waiting for you.

However, organizations come in all shapes and sizes and the same can be said for your customers. If you’re in the B2B market, it’s impossible to predict how many users each of your future customers will have, and how quickly their business might grow. The per-seat model is highly inflexible when it comes to scaling. As your business grows, you’ll need to change the pricing plan to allow more users to use the analytics – which inevitably means an increase in cost.

Pricing per query

Analytics providers that offer a query-based pricing model don't charge based on the number of people using it; instead they charge for the analytics that are being displayed. Each time an end user displays any visualization or report, the query is raised and recorded. The costs for the embedded analytics are calculated according to the final number of queries.

This method might be beneficial if you only /need to use analytics rarely because it doesn’t make sense to pay monthly for something you’ll use just once in a while. However, if your company intends to make data-driven decisions on a daily basis, or deliver analytics to a number of partners and customers, charging per query will be highly unpredictable.

Pricing per workspace

The workspace is the area of the analytics platform where you analyze and view data. You can set up a workspace and adjust it based on your specific embedded analytics use case. You can create user groups and manage the rights within one workspace – and there's no limit to how many users you can add. If you're a B2B company and need analytics for your partners and customers, you can create several workspaces, each of which matching the desired use case.

With this pricing model, the analytics provider charges based on the number of workspaces, and allows an unlimited number of users to use each workspace.

The per-workspace model is both highly predictable and flexible when it comes to scaling. You can encourage as many end users as possible to use the embedded BI without you (or your customers) worrying about the costs. Pricing can be easily calculated based on the following factors.

• Number of workspaces.
• Need for additional data storage.
• Specific feature add-ons (as required).

This pricing model allows you to easily forecast revenue as well as profit margins – in both the short and longer term. Importantly, if you bring on a new customer (organization) in a B2B scenario, it won’t have a negative impact on your profit margin.

Step 3: Choose the Right Embedded Analytics Pricing Model

Each of the pricing models can be a good fit, depending on your needs and goals. Asking the right questions can help you to decide which is the best choice:

• Do you know the exact number of users that will be using the embedded analytics solution? Is the business unlikely to grow rapidly? Seat-based pricing might be the best option.
• Do you only use analytics very rarely? Query-based pricing will help you to decrease costs.
• Do you need to deliver analytics to your teams, partners, and customers, and have the flexibility to scale without the cost becoming unpredictable? Pricing per workspace is the most suitable choice.

Ready To Learn More?

GoodData’s embedded analytics solution operates on the pricing-per-workspace model. To learn more, check out our pricing, or sign up for our free trial and start building insights for your teams or customers today!