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Optimizely Pricing (2024): How Much Does it Cost?
Explore the intricacies of Optimizely pricing and discover why it might not be the best fit for every business.
You’re likely wondering if Optimizely’s extensive suite of tools is really worth the money.
In this concise blog post, we’ll give you a full overview of Optmizely’s pricing to help you make an informed decision.
We’ll cover:
What is Optimizely?
How much each of its plans cost
Key differences between each plan
Whether Optimizely is worth it or not
How and why Eppo emerges as the better option
What is Optimizely?
Optimizely is a digital experience platform (DXP) that gives businesses (particularly those of enterprise level) the tools to improve their online presence and make sure customers keep coming back.
While Optimizely originally was an experimentation tool, they were acquired in 2020 by private equity and a European CMS company called Episerver. Since then, they have continued to acquire other marketing tools to build a wide-spanning suite of different businesses.
Because of this, Optimizely offers a suite of integrated tools. So, it’s not just one solution, but rather a bunch of solutions all belonging to the same platform. Let’s take a look at Optimizely’s pillars of service:
Experimentation: The original product, Optimizely lets businesses conduct A/B tests, multivariate tests, and feature experiments on websites and mobile apps to gather reliable results and make data-driven decisions that improve conversions, engagement, and other key metrics.
Personalization: Companies can deliver targeted content, product recommendations, and experiences to individual users based on their behavior, demographics, and preferences, creating a more relevant and engaging experience.
Content management: Rebranded from “Episerver” (the company that acquired Optimizely). Teams can create, manage, and deliver website content and digital experiences with authoring and layout tools, APIs (including headless options), content approval workflows, and numerous delivery options.
E-commerce: Optimizely has features like multi-site and multi-language support, visitor targeting and segmentation, project collaboration tools, inventory management, and order fulfillment.
Data platform: Optimizely allows companies to centralize customer data to align their brand strategy with the customer experience.
At first glance, one might think Optimizely is some kind of jack-of-all-trades. It’s not — as the resulting mashup of many acquired companies, they still have some work to do on integrating all of the different point solutions.
The other important truth is that they operate almost exclusively at an enterprise level, so it makes sense that they’d have such a varied assortment of services on offer.
Their price tag will likely also be that of an enterprise-level platform.
Optimizely pricing: How much does it cost?
Optimizely pricing can be quite hazy as they don't offer set pricing tiers or publicly list their prices. Instead, they provide custom quotes based on several factors, including:
Website traffic: The more traffic a site receives, the higher the cost is likely to be.
The toolset you use: Opting for more advanced features will naturally increase the price.
Business requirements: Optimizely tailors plans to your specific needs, so the cost will reflect the complexity of your setup.
What is known about Optimizely’s prices?
While exact figures are hard to come by, we can provide some estimates based on information from Convert and ex-Optimizely employees and customers who work at Eppo:
Smallest plan: The minimum annual cost for a basic plan is estimated to be $36,000.
Larger plans: For larger businesses with higher traffic volumes and a need for more advanced features, costs can easily surpass $200,000 per year.
Per impression: Some sources suggest that Optimizely Web Experimentation plans may cost around $63,700 for 10 million impressions, while Enterprise plans could reach $113,100 for the same number.
At the end of the day, the best way to understand Optimizely's pricing for your specific needs is to contact their sales team directly. Though you can be sure it’s quite a heavy investment to make.
Is Optimizely worth it?
The TL;DR is that Optimizely's value proposition depends heavily on your business size, needs, and budget. So let’s take a closer look and start by listing out who might actually find this platform useful:
Businesses already using the Optimizely CMS product: Since the CMS and experimentation tools were the two “original” products in the Optimizely suite, you can assume that they’ve spent the most time and attention integrating these two feature sets.
Companies with marketing-focused experimentation programs: If your company lacks dedicated engineering and data resources for experimentation, Optimizely specializes in approachable tools for marketing teams with deep pockets.
These teams will trade-off accuracy vs. business sources of truth like a data warehouse, but may find the WYSIWYG editor helpful.
Businesses prioritizing personalization: Optimizely’s personalization tools offer a few different out-of-the-box solutions for teams unable to build their own models, allowing you to create experiences based on user behavior, demographics, and other data points.
These are the types of businesses that should consider other options instead of Optimizely:
Small to mid-sized businesses, or businesses looking to keep budget low: Optimizely's pricing model, which is often based on website traffic rather than experiments run, can be cost-prohibitive for smaller businesses.
As one user pointed out, the pricing "penalizes those just starting with experimentation" due to high fees based on traffic volume, whether or not experiments are actively running.
Also, one reviewer said, “It becomes quite frustrating to manage usage limits and technical setup to avoid extra charges.”
Companies with strong data and engineering teams: While Optimizely’s detachment from existing software development lifecycles and data tools makes it easier for marketing teams to use independently, companies who are looking for strong control over how experiments are run and analyzed, or have stringent security requirements around data egress, will find Optimizely prohibitive.
Teams seeking ease of use: Some users have reported finding Optimizely's interface and documentation confusing. If ease of use is a priority, you might consider alternatives with more intuitive interfaces and better documentation.
For instance, a review highlighted that Optimizely's "UX is both confusing and too simple. It leads to errors by users."
Eppo: The best Optimizely alternative
If you’re unsure about Optimizely, you’ll be pleased to know about Eppo.
Eppo is an experimentation-first platform that helps you manage and test features with data you can trust and at price points suitable for businesses of all sizes.
Here are just some of the ways that Eppo beats Optimizely:
Warehouse-native approach: Unlike Optimizely, which relies on potentially unreliable JavaScript snippets for data collection, Eppo connects directly to your data warehouse. This means you have access to all your comprehensive business data for experimentation, including revenue metrics, not just top-level website metrics.
Simplified but rigorous experimentation: Eppo offers a comprehensive suite of experimentation tools and features, including A/B testing, multivariate testing, and feature experimentation, all in a single, unified platform.
Advanced statistical analysis: Eppo prioritizes data-driven decisions with its robust statistical engine and advanced analysis capabilities, such as CUPED++ (exclusive to Eppo), which can accelerate experiment runtime and improve statistical power.
Easy integration and deployment: Eppo facilitates the integration and deployment process, allowing for easier implementation and faster time-to-value compared to Optimizely's sometimes complex setup.
Enhanced security and compliance: Eppo's warehouse-native approach ensures that your sensitive data remains within your secure environment, minimizing security risks and ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.
Explore the intricacies of Optimizely pricing and discover why it might not be the best fit for every business.
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