Cost calculator for a Decoupled Headless CMS - Content as a Service (CaaS)

Why you should download the spreadsheet

As a helping hand to cut through all the blurb out there we have compared the costs for the following Decoupled Headless CMS - Content as a Service (CaaS); IBM Watson Content Hub, Kentico Cloud, Contentful, Prismic and Umbraco Cloud.

• Want to know how your current CMS provider compares against competition?
• Thinking about changing to a Decoupled Headless CMS - Content as a Service (CaaS) providers?
• Interested to know how much costs vary for licenced CMS providers?

What do you need to do?

Download the Excel spreadsheet, answer 3 questions outlined below and you can then compare how much each CMS provider will cost the business as an expense, these are broken down on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.

 Spreadsheet to compare the CMS providers (60KB)

The only information you need will be based on three key questions.

• Required number of user accounts?
• If premium support by the CMS provider is required?
• The number of pageviews for the year?

For ease, the statistics take into account 'flat-lining' any seasonal business statistics as some providers calculate the potential costs depending on the volume of traffic.

Costs explained

Prices can be quite varied between the CMS providers, this is due to the way they are priced. For example Kentico Cloud and Contentful are priced taking into account the volume of traffic (API calls), we assume each page on average takes 3 API calls.

While Prismic and Umbraco Cloud costs are more based on different tiers/level of support/features.

IBM Watson Content Hub

Leveraging a set of Watson AI cognitive services to help them get their arms around their content. So the package contains lightweight asset management features, combined with simple content publishing features, on top of a headless CMS.

The video below shows how easy it is to update content in a mobile application with IBM Watson Content Hub.

Kentico Cloud

There are 3 editions to give you enough flexibility, the ‘free’, ‘professional’ and ‘Enterprise’ tiers. If you have a small/medium sized website then the free edition could suffix, a large website the professional and a very large website the Enterprise tier. Please note only the Enterprise tier comes with an SLA and for a price you have to contact Kentico directly for a bespoke quote.

Free Editon: from $0

Includes:

• 3 users free + $10 per additional user
• 50,000 Content API Calls free + $0.10/month for 1,000 extra

Professional Edition: $299

Includes:

• 10 users free + $10 per additional user
• 250,000 Content API Calls free + $0.10/month per 1,000 API calls extra

Enterprise Edition: Contact the Sales team for a quote

Includes:

• 20 users free
• 2,000,000 content API calls free

Contentful

There are 4 editions to give you enough flexibility, the ‘Free’, ‘Medium’, ‘Large’ and ‘Enterprise’ tiers. If you have a static site then the ‘Free’ edition could suffix, if you need more users/languages then ‘Medium’ tier could be a good fit, the ‘Large’ tier is aimed for a website where you require high bandwidth and good support. The ‘Enterprise’ tier comes with an SLA for business critical projects and for a price you have to contact Contentful directly for a bespoke quote.

Free Edition: from $0

Includes:

• 3 users free + $20 per additional user (max of 10)
• 50,000 API calls per month free + $0.15/month per 1,000 API calls extra

Medium Edition: $249

Includes:

• 10 users free + $20 per additional user (max of 20)
• 250,000 API calls per month free + $0.10/month per 1,000 API calls extra

Large Edition: $949

Includes:

• 20 users free + $20 per additional user (max of 40)
• 1,000,000 API calls per month free + $0.08/month per 1,000 API calls extra

Enterprise Edition: Contact the Sales team for a quote

Includes:

• SLA
• Premium support

Prismic

For Prismic there are 3 tiers, one is based if you have less than 25 users and the other two tiers have an unlimited number of users. There is no hard limit on how much you can store in a production content repository, or on how much you use the Writing Room and the Content Query API. Please be aware the content repository is for ‘fair normal use’. Prismic will reach out to you if they believe your project will go beyond this limit.

Medium Edition: $100

Includes:

• No cost for API calls
• 25 Users Maximum
• SLA (99,5% API Uptime)
• Basic Support

Unlimited Edition: $300

Includes:

• No cost for API calls
• Unlimited Users
• Basic support
• SLA (99,9% API Uptime)

Platinum Edition: $500

Includes:

• No cost for API calls
• Unlimited Users
• SLA (99,9% API Uptime)
• Premium Support

Umbraco Cloud

A bit of a curve ball, I have added Umbraco Cloud where this is stored in the cloud allowing automated upgrades, unlimited hosting and smooth deployments. There are 3 tiers which should give you enough flexibility.

Starter Edition: €25

Includes:

• Unlimited Storage and Bandwidth

Professional Edition: €400

Includes:

• Unlimited Storage and Bandwidth
• SLA 99.9%
• Support - Response within 24hrs

Enterprise Edition: Contact the Sales team for a quote

Includes:

• Unlimited Storage and Bandwidth
• SLA 99.95%
• Support - Response within 2hrs