Becoming a Contentful customer: Why partnership matters more than price

This summer, North America hosts the FIFA World Cup, and many of us will be on the edge of our seats, ready to cheer on our national side. We’ll get to experience some unforgettable performances from every group—both the triumph and the heartache—but what we won’t see is what goes into those performances in the lead-up to the tournament; the process required to create elite players and teams.

For the players, and the coaches, that process matters more than anything. They need to have the right training methods, the right facilities, the right equipment, and the right systems in place to perform at the highest level, delight their fans, and, ultimately, win their matches.

At Contentful, we see our customers as elite players. They use our leading digital experience platform (DXP) to deliver high-performing content experiences, and then scale them across different brands, multiple channels, and global markets. That means they understand the value of choosing the right technology as the foundation for building strong brands and successful businesses.  

And that’s a good way to tee up an important question. In cost-conscious times, it makes perfect sense that a lot of potential customers ask “How much lower can you go on cost?” when we connect with them about our platform.

It’s a fair question. Budgets are tight; if you’re a CIO, CFO, CDO, CTO, etc. for your company, or on its procurement team, you’re going to be pushing for savings—and every dollar makes a difference when it’s time to close the books.

But it’s not necessarily a simple question because it tends to frame price as the primary variable in the negotiation at the expense of other, critical factors that are just as pertinent, if not more important, to the overall value of the product.

In the era of the Great Content Collapse, you need a better way to approach this problem—and this post is a plea to everyone involved in price negotiations with tech vendors to hear our take on it. 

The discount question

When it comes to purchasing business tech, developer, technical, and marketing teams used to lead the content platform evaluation process and were ultimately the key decision-makers. 

That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone: These teams are familiar with the commercial landscape, know precisely what their organizations need to uplift, and understand the capabilities of the tech on offer. 

The skill and expertise of these teams hasn’t changed, but there has been a shift in the final stage of decision-making. Today, there are more people at the bargaining table, with procurement and legal departments deeply involved, or even having final say in the process. 

This change is natural. Budgets are now a critical concern; cost, compliance, and governance matter more than ever. And on our side of the table, as content management technology evolves, vendors have to stay on their toes and make sure the products they’re developing deliver real value for their customers. 

That dynamic entails significant behind-the-scenes costs for Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors, a fair exchange of value, and pressure to push for price reductions on the client side.

The price risk

But there’s a risk to this approach. When price is the only thing driving the customer-vendor relationship, it’s easy to fixate on it and disregard other inputs—such as months of technical evaluations, pilot tests, architectural planning, marketing objectives, compliance concerns, future-proofing, total cost of ownership (TCO) reductions, return on investment (ROI), and so on. 

In that context, cheaper vendors or bigger discounts stand out more. And, while they might feel like a saving in the short term, they can leave brands dealing with painful tech debt, including poor system performance, higher maintenance overhead, slower time-to-market, less future-proofing, and other internal friction down the line. 

You don’t have to look far to see the effects of these outcomes in the real world, where tech debt creates vicious cycles of cost. In fact, research shows that tech debt accounts for about 40% of global IT department balance sheets, and that companies often pay an extra 10% to 20% of the original price of the tech to service it. 

Building a fair exchange of value

At Contentful, our approach to price isn’t to try to win a bidding war and then leave our customers to work things out on their own. Instead, it’s to show that we’re going to be the best partners when we build on a fair exchange of value. 

We totally get the real pressures that procurement teams face. The best way for us to help manage those pressures with our platform is by building a relationship, and driving as hard as possible to meet your business needs—rather than slashing prices. 

That relationship needs to be based on transparency: It should be an open, honest discussion about the customer’s budget constraints, what’s needed economically, and what their expectations are. Not an opaque, “You’re too expensive compared to another vendor” feedback loop.

That’s easy to say and tough to do, but it's the best thing for both sides. It’s also not something that can really happen with the standard request for proposal (RFP), which typically triggers a period in which both parties dance around each other, waiting for concessions, deciding what information to share, and avoiding having to commit to anything too early.

In the best cases, that dance burns through time; in the worst, goodwill. 

The value of partnership

The point we want to make here is that getting your cards on the table as early as possible is the best strategy. 

If we know your budget range and business goals, we’ll be able to deliver better answers, faster. Ideally, we’ll be able to avoid the RFP-dance completely, and clear the path to the important stuff: Understanding your business pain points and explaining how Contentful is going to solve them, and then actually turn them into positives. 

That’s the perspective we want for every new customer: See Contentful as a potential partner first and a vendor second, and then use that as the foundation for our relationship. 

And yes, there are going to be scenarios where things just don’t align. Where we can’t match customer needs with product capabilities and economic red lines. That’s not a disaster: Everyone comes away with an improved understanding of the other party, and the possibility that things will align down the road. More importantly, both parties are able to focus on the things that will happen, and how we can all win. It also allows us to save time.

Regardless, once we have that initial transparency and the early formation of a partnership, we can talk more meaningfully about price, gain a better understanding of where we can save you money, and properly answer the “discount question.”

Talk to us. We want to help. We really do! 

The Contentful advantage

Remember: You’re the elite players in this relationship. You’re bringing the skill, creativity, and expertise, and we’re providing the tools you need to build experiences that delight your audiences.

And the good news is that the Contentful platform has specific advantages to help you get that job done at a price that makes sense. 

Our composable architecture, for example, ensures that you won’t be overpaying for features that you don’t use or don’t need. Establishing a structured content model means that you’ll be able to create and reuse your content more efficiently than ever. And our AI-powered automations are productivity game-changers for creating and managing campaigns. 

There’s much more to say about how Contentful delivers value, and many more examples of us doing that for brands around the world. In fact, we’ve seen global brands achieve cost and efficiency savings with Contentful, at speed. An enterprise like Lactalis, for example, which scaled platform benefits to regional content teams working across multiple websites and brands. The point is, the flexibility of our platform means that, assuming we’re working from a foundation of transparency and mutual understanding, we’re in a position to help almost every brand transform successfully. 

We’re not playing a zero-sum game, and your content platform shouldn’t be a prize you win by haggling. Instead, let’s normalize the expectation that the outcome of positive, open negotiation is that we find the right solution. 

So if you’re on the fence about making the leap to a DXP, let’s talk. Let’s define your goals, constraints, and financial requirements, and then explore how Contentful can support you—not just today, but years down the line.

Browse Contentful’s pricing plans to learn more or get in touch with our sales team to arrange a demo and discuss the next step in your DXP migration. 

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