Understanding Sitecore XM Cloud Pricing

Understanding Sitecore XM Cloud Pricing

Sitecore XM Cloud introduces a new approach to licensing and pricing with some interesting angles that differ from previous Sitecore models. This shift reflects the evolving nature of digital experience platforms and mass adoption of enterprise SaaS solutions. Understanding these differences is crucial for organizations considering Sitecore XM Cloud, as it impacts not only costs but also the overall value proposition.

I cannot share pricing directly. Sitecore owns the pricing of the Sitecore XM Cloud platform. But I’ll dig into everything I can share so you can be an informed buyer and dare I say good partner throughout the process.

As a TL;DR, if you’re interested in purchasing Sitecore XM Cloud please reach out to us at Fishtank. I will work directly with you to ensure you’re an empowered, educated buyer, getting the best value for you organization.

Key Factors in XM Cloud Pricing

Sitecore XM Cloud is essentially the leader in enterprise-scale CMS / DXP platforms. The key here with pricing is enterprise. It’s a relatively big ticket item, subject to negotiation and procurement. But that said - we’ve done a lot of work with XM Cloud and can tell you the main drivers of cost are number of environments, volume of site traffic and optionally - the inclusion of a front-end hosting & delivery platform. So let’s dig in.

Number of Projects and Environments

In terms of nomenclature, XM Cloud has two core concepts: projects and environments. A project contains many environments. Typically, one project contains three environments: two non-production environments (e.g., development and testing) and one production environment.

Each environment is an entire Sitecore XM Cloud instance containing multiple websites or properties, with unique content and data.

One project with three environments works well for most organizations. However, there are circumstances when additional projects or environments are beneficial:

When Additional Projects Are Needed: You should use separate projects when the websites (or platforms) have different regulations, purposes, or teams. For example, a company might have an internal website for employees (intranet) and a public website for customers.

These sites have different features, designs, user access rules, integrations, security requirements, and release schedules.

XM Cloud works well for both types of sites, but they'll work best as separate projects to have the autonomy they need.

When Additional Environments Are Needed: Additional environments are usually a reflection of internal complexities involving multiple teams or business processes. Likely, the larger the organization, the more likely the need is. We have a customer with a large SAP integration; the SAP team needs their own steady-state environment to validate how their changes impact the site.

This is an example of a standard XM Cloud setup:

This is an example of a more advanced XM Cloud environment setup.

Number of Unique Sessions

Sitecore XM Cloud follows a SaaS pricing model, so it's consistent that costs increase with higher usage.

You might be able to get away with more or fewer environments, but the traffic your website receives is a different story, and it's the most likely factor establishing your baseline cost in Sitecore XM Cloud.

Traffic is counted against your production instance only, so as you add more projects (which grant you another production environment), your entitlements for unique sessions also scale. Consequently, you might find that by adding more entitlements for traffic, you end up with more environments, or vice versa.

Front-End Hosting and Delivery Platform (Optional)

If it hasn't been mentioned yet, Sitecore XM Cloud is a headless DXP / CMS solution. It has the robust page building and management capabilities of traditional high-end CMS platforms but with headless delivery.

This is important because, like other headless CMS solutions, you need to have a front-end to deliver the website. This is commonly done using Vercel or Netlify, but there are many options we can explore later.

Sitecore has the ability to bundle front-end hosting as part of the Sitecore XM Cloud license. So it's critical when comparing the cost of XM Cloud to other options to note whether the prices of competitors include front-end hosting. Make sure you're comparing apples to apples.

Sitecore can bundle the enterprise tier of Vercel & Netlify, but if their respective pro tier’s fit your organization, it could result in significant savings.

Additional Considerations

While the environment, traffic and front-end platforms are major factors in the XM Cloud cost, there are other elements to understands.

• Concurrent Users: This represents the number of users expected to be logged in concurrently to the CMS to create content or manage the website - not concurrent users of the public-facing website.
• Edge Bandwidth: A global CDN is used to deliver content and assets. There is a monthly bandwidth entitlement that is generous (we've never had a customer go over), but in extreme circumstances, it could affect pricing.
• Edge Storage: The global CDN requires storage allocation for all published content and assets. Again, it's a generous entitlement, but outliers could affect pricing.
• Additional Products: Sitecore has an additional suite of products. These can be bundled with Sitecore XM Cloud, which would affect your overall cost. Again, make sure you're comparing apples to apples when comparing prices to competitors.
• Special Circumstances: I obviously don't speak for Sitecore, but there could be any number of extenuating circumstances or creativity in licensing that affect the cost.

Competitive Pricing

I’m not sure what you’ve heard, or what you expect, but Sitecore XM Cloud is priced competitively against the competition and for its feature set. Sitecore’s leadership understand the market and are looking to be a player.

And speaking from first-hand experience, we’ve done a lot of deals in the last year with Sitecore XM Cloud. Even though I think Fishtank brings a lot to the table, we couldn’t win opportunities unless licensing and implementation costs worked for everyone.

I’m very confident the pricing (Fishtank implementation + Sitecore XM Cloud licensing) is a very competitive proposition for organizations.

Sitecore’s XM Cloud Target Audience

In regards to price, you might wonder if your organization is the right size. Can you afford it? Does a solution as powerful as XM Cloud make sense?

We've had organizations of all sizes find that XM Cloud was within their budget. From publicly traded TV and internet providers, tourism agencies, and energy utilities, to non-profit organizations with 50-200 staff - they've all found the cost of Sitecore XM Cloud (plus Fishtank 😉) to be a compelling solution.

Of course, a modest non-profit compared to an energy utility serving millions will have different licensing price points (see above - re: environment scale and traffic). The point is that Sitecore's approach to pricing is flexible and in-touch.

So don't count yourself out. Have the conversation with us or Sitecore.

Already Have a Sitecore License?

Let's look at different types of existing Sitecore licensing and how they relate to Sitecore XM Cloud pricing.

Perpetual Licensing: If you are a long-standing Sitecore customer benefiting from a legacy licensing agreement referred to as a "perpetual license," you're likely getting a steal of a deal at this point. In this model, you have limitations on features and environments, but your organization paid a lump sum up front and is only paying a fraction yearly for annual support.

Subscription Licensing: Most customers are on subscription-based licensing, with access to the latest features and a licensing model that supports cloud-based infrastructure and scaling. The licensing model is also tied to unique site visitors, so it's already more aligned with XM Cloud.

As a generalization - if you have a perpetual license, you can expect your licensing cost to increase. However, if you are on a subscription license, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Because XM Cloud is a SaaS-based service, you no longer have to pay for your infrastructure hosting and operations. So the true cost comparison is: existing Sitecore license + infrastructure + operations vs Sitecore XM Cloud license.

If you’re looking to evaluate your version of Sitecore compared to options take a look at Comparing Sitecore XM Cloud vs Sitecore XP vs Sitecore XM.

Sitecore XM Cloud Features Worth Paying For

I've been building and overseeing solutions in Sitecore for a long time. Sitecore has always had a robust feature set related to workflow, multi-site, content management, multi-language, authoring, headless, multi-channel, personalization, analytics, etc. So, I'd like to quickly walk through some new features unique to XM Cloud.

True Enterprise SaaS Platform

Sitecore XM Cloud operates as a fully cloud-based platform, eliminating the need for on-premises infrastructure or complex hosting setups. This SaaS model ensures no more upgrades, scalability, and significant cost savings on hosting.

With XM Cloud, organizations can save resources and team efforts previously required for maintenance. It provides an opportunity to modernize your organization's infrastructure with a true enterprise SaaS-based solution.

Value: No more upgrades, automatic updates, and more efficient use of team and resources.

Page Builder

Page Builder, formerly known as Sitecore Pages, offers an enhanced visual editing experience with an overhauled interface. It provides more capabilities within a single view and delivers better performance compared to the previous Experience Editor.

Value: Easier and faster to build digital experiences, reducing time to market.

Components

Components, known as a Front-End As A Service (FEaaS) feature in Sitecore XM Cloud, lets non-technical users visually create and customize website components, including ones that connect with APIs. You can set up your brand guidelines in the platform, so all components fit well with your existing site design.

Value: More flexibility and less dependence on developers.

XM Cloud Forms

Forms allows marketers to create forms on-demand and integrate them with webhooks, so all submissions can easily be captured, processed, and integrated into business processes.

Value: Simplified marketing tech stack.

Experience Edge

Experience Edge is a key component of Sitecore XM Cloud that provides global content delivery and caching capabilities. It utilizes a network of edge servers to deliver content quickly and efficiently to users worldwide. This feature significantly improves website performance and reduces latency, especially for geographically dispersed audiences.

Value: Global performance and built-in security layer.

Personalization at the Edge

Sitecore XM Cloud improves personalization by processing experiences "at the edge." This means personalization is executed in milliseconds on the global content delivery CDN, ensuring no compromise between customer experience and site performance.

The trade-off for the super-fast personalization is that more advanced use-cases for personalization have been moved to the Sitecore Personalize product. This is really only a concern if you've made extensive use of the Sitecore XP personalization rules on your current site.

Value: Create personalized experiences without compromising page speed or core web vitals scoring.

Easy, Faster Development Environment

Previously, Sitecore development environments on Windows could get quite complicated. But now with Sitecore XM Cloud, Sitecore development environments no longer require complex code editors, Windows dependencies, or operating system non-sense. The new connected development environments work on Windows, Mac, and Linux and only take a few commands to get up and running.

Working on XM Cloud in connected mode also removes the previous requirement to constantly rebuild and redeploy your website locally while developing.

Value: A faster, more efficient development environment leads to more getting done.

Automated Deployment App

With Sitecore XM Cloud, there is a dedicated app called Deploy that connects directly to your code repository and automatically builds your project and deploys your environment. It is a massive improvement over what previously was a custom DevOps process to deploy updates to the site.

Value: Release faster, safer, and more often.

Pricing Front-End Hosting Options

It's a new paradigm in the modern age of headless CMS platforms. Website front-ends—what users actually interact with—are now built on application frameworks specifically designed to deliver websites (like Next.js). These are then deployed on platforms (like Vercel & Netlify) built to deliver these application frameworks in serverless, infinitely scalable, and user-friendly environments. It's an extreme amount of innovation when compared to previous models of website delivery.

From a pricing perspective, there are a few things to note.

Vercel and Netlify Pro Tiers

Both Vercel and Netlify have pro-tier offerings available at $19/user/month. You can try to sneak around it, but essentially every developer on the project should have a seat. You can do your own math on that; perhaps it's a few thousand per year.

However, pro tiers do not offer advanced security features or things like SOC2 compliance. Often, the marketing team might feel the pro tier is fine, but the security and compliance team may not.

Vercel and Netlify Enterprise Tiers

These are full-featured, complete platforms, each with unique offerings. To be honest, you may need to talk to someone like Fishtank to determine which one is right for your organization.

For example - with some planning, they could potentially host all of your applications, not just your Sitecore website.

But from a pricing perspective, there is a jump. I've spoken with Netlify, and their starter Enterprise offering is $36,000 USD for Sitecore XM Cloud customers. Vercel’s base tier begins at $34,5000 USD for Sitecore XM Cloud customers. The cost will increase for both providers depending on usage.

What is interesting about the enterprise tier (as I mentioned before) is that Sitecore can sell Netlify & Vercel directly and bundle their offerings with the overall Sitecore XM Cloud licensing cost.

A More Detailed Look

Obviously, this option has an impact on overall cost, and there are a lot of strategic options, so please consider reaching out if you're looking for more insight.

As a teaser, Jason St-Cyr, Fishtank's VP of Engagement, put together a great article on How To Choose a Next.js Hosting Provider for XM Cloud.

Here are a few more relevant articles on the topic.

• Comparison of Vercel Pro vs Enterprise
• Research on the Benefits and ROI of Vercel
• Cloudflare & Netlify: A Powerful Infrastructure Stack

Adding Additional Sitecore Products

Sitecore has number of other composable products they offer to help organization fulfill their technology roadmaps. If you’re purchasing them along with Sitecore XM Cloud, they’ll likely be presented as a bundled cost. Let’s take a look at some of our favorite additional products.

Most customers do purchase multiple products but when you’re comparing Sitecore XM Cloud’s price to other vendors, be sure to understand what products are potentially bundled to ensure you’re making a fair comparison of cost and value.

Is Sitecore XM Cloud Pricing Too Hot, Too Cold or Just Right?

If you’re looking at “basic”, “starter” or “pro” tiers of other DXPs, Sitecore XM Cloud will be more expensive. But if you get into the enterprise tiers, start comparing features, performance & value - XM Cloud is a very compelling option. So here’s what I’d leave with you:

• Environments and traffic are key drivers of price.
• Sitecore XM Cloud pricing (in my experience) has been very competitive and flexible. Sitecore is interested in winning.
• We have organizations 10s to 10,000s of employees who are using XM Cloud. This is a testament to its pricing and fit.
• Front-end platforms can have a considerable cost and can be bundled with the XM Cloud pricing. So be sure to explore the different tiers of the Vercel and Netlify front-end platforms before committing. It might save you you valuable dollars.
• As Sitecore has so many additional product offerings that may be include, ensure you understand what’s being bundled to compare value with competitors.

Thank you for reading. By all means, set yourself up for success by becoming an educated buyer before choosing Sitecore XM Cloud.

Please contact us at Fishtank for an open and honest discussion about Sitecore XM Cloud pricing. We'd love to help you make the right decision for your organization.