Pricing is – by far – the most common question asked when we start talking with prospective customers. And of course, we understand that you need to know the costs as part of your decision-making process. For us, we want to make sure you have the right solution for your needs and then the best pricing for your solution. In this article, I would like to share a little more about how our pricing works.
It starts with us understanding what features and capabilities are best for your specific needs, so we can work together to save you money. Let’s start with a few examples.
1. Getting the right products for your use case
We have a total of 24 different products, whose costs vary and some capabilities overlap. We are always happy to share the prices of individual products with you – but we have learned over time that it is even more important to start from your specific business problems, as opposed to a price list. This way we can ensure that you are spending as little as possible, but getting all the capabilities you need.
Here are some common examples that highlight this:
Example 1: Your customer and lead addresses are one of your most valuable assets, and you want the best available address validation capabilities to ensure they are at the highest level of data quality and accuracy.
Our most advanced – and expensive – address validation service is DOTS Address Detective, a sophisticated product that can resolve and validate even some of the most difficult or fatal addressing issues. But we would actually suggest a much more cost-effective solution that will give you everything you need: namely, running 100% of this data through our flagship DOTS Address Validation – US product first. This will often validate and correct around 95% of your data, and then you can run the remaining 5% through Address Detective. This way you save money by using a less expensive product for the majority of your addresses and only use the more costly solution for the more problematic 5% of your data.
Example 2: You have international addresses in your data set, but we determine that only 25% of these addresses are international and 75% are US-based.
Here we would recommend using Address Validation – US for the 75% (as it is less expensive) and DOTS Address Validation – International for the other 25%. In addition, the US validation service also comes with additional features that do not apply to international addresses, such as Residential Delivery Indicator (RDI), delivery point validation (DPV), generation of ZIP+4 codes, and more.
Example 3: You ask for pricing for DOTS GeoPhone, but after speaking to our product experts, learn you want mobile data as well.
This is one case where we would suggest a more expensive solution than what you were looking for because our DOTS GeoPhone Plus product offers the mobile data that you need.
Example 4: You might think you need “lead validation,” but your lead forms only collect names and email addresses.
In a case such as this, we would actually steer you away from our DOTS Lead Validation product; since you do not collect addresses or phone numbers, you would not be able to take advantage of the cross-validation checks this product offers and would be overpaying for a solution that would be more cost-effectively solved with DOTS Name Validation and DOTS Email Validation.
As you can see, the potential combinations of needs are endless, but this is where our expertise with both our products and their prices come in. More often than not, once our product experts have a better understanding of what you are trying to accomplish, we can suggest products or combinations of products that save you more money and/or better meet your needs.
2. Understanding product pricing
We are often asked why our validation products are priced differently – and why they are sometimes priced very differently from competitors.
First, a lot of this has to do with the features bundled with our products. So when comparing us to our competitors, we might first appear more expensive. BUT – the devil is in the details – or in this case – the extra costs are in our competitors’ add-ons. Be sure you are comparing apples to apples when you can. (For example, our Address Validation – US product includes many features that are sold at additional costs by other companies.) We find that once you clearly define your needs and understand that many of our competitors charge extra for additional features that you need, we are very cost-competitive. Then factor in our commitment to customer support, guaranteed uptime and overall product quality, we are a clear top option.
Second, you get what you pay for. When it comes to our competitors, not all data validation companies are created equal. Like most industries, there is a range to the quality of service and support that is provided. With almost two decades of experience in the space, we proudly sit at the top end of the quality range and continuously commit resources to stay there.
Third, all lookups are not created equal. From a purely practical point of view, for example, phone data is far more expensive to gather and maintain than BIN data. Most of our products leverage sophisticated third-party databases and other resources. As a result, our costs vary per product based on factors ranging from licensing costs to update frequency – so, for example, your dollar goes farther with DOTS Email Validation than it does with the more sophisticated DOTS Lead Validation – International (which includes our Email Validation service). We believe in breaking these costs out by product so that those who need fewer capabilities can save more money while still having a high-quality data validation solution.
3. Are you a power user?
If you process a lot of data, that’s great! In this case, we can save you even more money, because we are able to offer volume discounts on our products. These discounts vary per product – talk with us for more details.
4. You are paying for quality as well as capabilities
Most of our customers use our products in mission-critical applications, where uptime and responsive support are crucial. This is why we offer responsive technical support 24/7 for urgent issues, as well as the industry’s only financially-backed Service Level Agreement (SLA) guaranteeing 99.999% uptime or better. When you make pricing decisions for important data quality applications, it is important to factor in the potential risks and very real costs of poor support and implementation problems from other vendors.
5. We can get creative
We love to work with our clients to understand what they are trying to accomplish, and if needed, come up with some pretty creative custom solutions. Our customers are experts in their fields, and we are experts in ours. Put the two of us together and we can come up with some pretty aweSOme solutions – ones that are cost-effective and move the needle.
Questions? We’re here to help
Our whole company is based around a service-oriented model. From putting our entire technical documentation online, to letting you test-drive our products live on our website (at 3 in the morning, if you wish!), to having friendly technical people to consult with you about your specific needs, our goal is always to help you understand our products AND our prices, so you can choose the best solutions.
So please – jump on a call with us, tell us your needs, and give us an opportunity to come up with a tailored solution for you.
