New Xperience pricing gets innovatively disruptive

Earlier this year, Kentico announced changes to our pricing model that was purposely designed to evaluate a shift in licensing concepts towards a more favorable subscription model for Kentico Xperience. We’ve received significant feedback from both clients and partners, providing positive support of the new model, as well as exceptional recommendations for enhancing the model going forward. 

The universally positive input gave us the insight necessary to further simplify our approach and extend how we define the value of Xperience and our licensing. We feel these changes will truly differentiate the value Xperience offers and modernize the way clients invest in digital experience platforms (DXPs).

Change #1: Auto-scaling for all 

We have decided to eliminate the concept of server counting from our licensing. As many clients move towards cloud hosting and dynamically scaling environments to support their websites, the idea of quantifying the number of servers is archaic and antiquated. As such, we’re streamlining our approach to licensing for both Perpetual and Subscription license models, and we’re simplifying virtually all license options to be auto-scalable. 

A few reasons that’s a good thing: 

For projects with simpler architecture requirements, we’re keeping a single-server option for Perpetual licenses. 

Change #2: Don’t settle with single-site licensing 

The success of our clients is Kentico’s paramount focus. We strive to establish long-term relationships with our customers where, year after year, we can consistently deliver more high-value benefits. With this in mind, we’re making it easier for clients to choose Xperience as their DXP of choice for all websites. We’d like to ensure clients can make an easier decision to leverage Xperience more extensively for near- and long-term goals. 

Which is why we’re introducing the Xperience 5 Website license option! This enables customers to more readily invest in the success of their long-term digital strategy by leveraging Xperience. The 5 Website license option is available in both the Perpetual and Subscription license models, so that clients can choose the option most appropriate for their budget and utilization goals. 

Additionally, this license option allows clients to deploy managed sites into independent environments, even geographies, if desired. 

Change #3: Subscription on steroids 

We recognize that many of our clients have needs that far exceed five—or even 10—sites. For this, we are also introducing the concept of a Corporate license as a Subscription option! Believe me when I tell you that this is a game changer for many of our larger customers. This option offers a subscription to utilize Xperience for unlimited websites across unlimited environments with auto-scaling. 

Unlimited potential at a fair, fixed price—what could be better? Oh, I know! We could include the following with all Corporate license options, whether Perpetual or Subscription: 

So that’s exactly what we’ve done. Pretty great deal, right?  

These new pricing options will be available and effective as of July 1, 2020: 

Q&A 

We modified our license structure to better enable organizations to choose Xperience for their long-term digital experience strategies. By placing greater value on auto-scaling and the 5 Website license option, we needed to make adjustments to all license options. We feel the changes we’ve made currently provide our clients with the greatest potential value in selecting Xperience at all scales of deployment for near- and long-term goals. 

No—Kentico has historically been extremely generous with clients regarding changes in licensing and pricing. We plan to continue this and don’t anticipate any pricing changes to negatively affect our existing customers. 

No—we recognize the need for flexibility in deployment models and will not restrict how clients approach their deployment strategy for managed sites. They can be deployed independently in separate environments or deployed within the same installation in the same environment. The choice is yours. 

4. Will the 5 Website license require I purchase a 1 Website license first? 

No—you can decide to purchase the 5 Website license directly. 

5. Will Kentico’s Subscription license options still include a subscription to the Headless API Layer for Xperience (previously called the “Kontent Delivery Plan”)? 

Yes—all Xperience Subscription license plans will include a complimentary subscription to the Xperience Headless API Layer. 

Yes—we’ll give existing Xperience clients with website licenses the option to upgrade their license to an auto-scalable license. We also want to ensure this is a viable option for many of our customers that need it, so we’ve priced the upgrades as follows: