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Datorama Pricing Guide and Purchase Consideration Checklist

By Ross Jenkins, Revised on January 15, 2023 at 6:14 PM EST

Purchasing new technology comes with a set of considerations far beyond pricing. Datorama, now called Marketing Intelligence is a robust, SaaS data platform but the ecosystem is filled with competitively priced platforms loaded with solid features, too. As you carefully consider your next investment, what should you know about the total cost of Datorama ownership? Let's get you started.

About the Author

Ross is the CEO of Decision Foundry, one of Datorama’s oldest, most experienced and awarded implementation partners. He is also a recognized Marketing Cloud Champion with over 8 years of hands-on experience working on the platform. He is a frequent contributor to the Intelligence community and has spoken at several major Salesforce conferences, including Dreamforce 2022.

Datorama Pricing Considerations

There’s value in Salesforce’s flagship, Intelligence platform, but let’s start with what is Datorama? It’s a data platform purchased by Salesforce in 2018 for approximately 800 million dollars, according to Business Insider. Datorama, now called Marketing Cloud Intelligence provides exceptional data management capabilities that can fit any sized organization or supporting industry. See our case studies.

Marketers using MCI enjoy a broad use of data connectors, prebuilt data models, and flexible, custom ETL tools, that greatly speed up reporting automation and dashboard development. It was originally built to help media agencies automate their performance reports, manage spend and reconcile end of month billing and delivery issues. Despite its premium features, Datorama does not come with a high price of ownership. In fact, it is relatively affordable compared to similarly positioned alternatives. Looking to better negotiate based on what you need vs what you’ll likely be sold? Then, read on.

What Drives the Price of Datorama?

Marketing Cloud Intelligence’s pricing, formerly known as Datorama is often determined by seven factors:

  • Volume and Data row consumption
  • Number of required (direct access) users
  • Implementation support (optional)
  • Potential add-ons and options, including data warehouse, media transparency center and data lake
  • Contracts. Multi-year license agreements
  • Salesforce Product-mix or bundling
  • Timing. Fast signature dates, particularly end of month/quarter

For purposes of this article, we’ll only discuss the estimated price of the license. So, how much does Datorama cost?Fortunately, Datorama is transparent, and the cost of its software is publicly available. However, let’s take a closer review of the factors that aren’t publicly listed.

What’s in a Datorama Starter Package? (Detailed Costs and Description)

Let’s call this level one. The Datorama Starter Package includes the basic tools to onboard, unify, and visualize marketing data from all channels and platforms. You’ll have immediate access to Datorama’s Total Connect and Mix, Visualize, Harmonization, Data Canvas, Analyze, and Marketplace features.

To get started, you’ll receive an average of 10 user licenses, including one or two admins, a few power users, and basic viewers. This may seem like an immediate barrier to adoption, but there’s more. You can also securely share and export data dashboards and reports through Slack, email, embedded links, and downloads (png, xls, ppt, pdf). The Datorama Starter Package pricing begins around $3,000USD per month, three millions rows of data and is billed annually.

Are you building out a first-time Marketing Cloud project, or do you need short-term managed services?

What’s a Data Row and how is it calculated in Datorama?

As an example, if you want to see impressions for each combination of 3 Advertisers, 5 Campaigns, 4 Creatives and 10 Geos over the course of one year (365 days) – you will produce 3 x 5 x 4 x 10 x 365 = 219,000 rows to cover each combination.

Here’s a more detailed example for calculating Datorama data rows:

If you have 3 advertisers (each of which have…), 5 campaigns live at once (which each have…), 4 creatives (and are also targeted to…) 10 geos that you need to report on in Datorama, and you need to hold the data for 365 days with this level of detail, this would result in new rows per day and the full annual capacity would be 600 x 365 = 219,000 rows of data capacity for this data source since we would want to track metrics against each of those combined levels.

For smaller organizations, the starter package should be enough to sustain growth for two years or more, depending on data row consumption levels. However, be cautious of the granularity of your data, which can exponentially increase your row capacity. But the good news is that there are ways to reduce this.

What’s in a Datorama Growth Package? (Detailed pricing and description)

Let’s call this Level 2. If you require the onboarding of more data rows, more users, and more workspaces, then the Datorama Growth Package is typically considered by mid-size organizations. The pricing starts at $10,000USD per month billed annually.

What’s in a Datorama Plus Package? (Detailed Costs and Description)

Let’s call this Level 3. The Datorama Plus Package is typically deployed for larger enterprises or publishers that may have thousands of data sources, or more. Pricing is still based on the number of data rows, users and workspaces required but refer to your Salesforce Account Executive for more details.

Special Note: Decision Foundry is an implementation partner and not a part of Salesforce. The price of a Datorama license may vary. Refer to Datorama Salesforce for specifics.

Datorama Implementation

What’s the Estimated Price of Self-Implementing Vs. Certified Partner Implementation Support?

Salesforce tells us that the “Magic is in the middle”, when referring to Marketing Cloud Intelligence. Take take advantage of all that the platform has to offer, there is a learning curve. Some clients decide to self-implement. If you decide to do so, keep in mind that there is an indirect cost. Take a look at our Datorama implementation checklist to consider before making a final decision. The total cost of ownership will depend on a few parameters:

  • The number of FTEs dedicated to importing and preparing data
  • The average cost per hour for dedicated project resources
  • Estimated number of hours per FTE per year generated from Datorama projects
  • Productivity reclaimed
  • Impact on analyst retention

How Many Hours Per Week Should I Expect to Spend on Datorama Implementation Projects?

For moderately complex projects, you can expect to spend between 40 to 60 hours per week or more on implementation. Although Datorama is a mature data management platform, there are few talented professionals and organizations that can successfully build, expand, and maintain the platform.

Thankfully, Datorama is approachable enough that it can be taught to non-analysts while remaining powerful enough for experienced Data Scientists. Datorama Customer Success provides a wealth of training materials to clients who want to expand their expertise or even become certified non-partners.

Why Work with a Datorama Certified Implementation Partner?

Often, client data is siloed across multiple systems with no centralized source to be shared across teams and projects.

Manually pulling, cleaning, and harmonizing data can be a heavy lift.

When clients want to be involved in the strategy and implementation of their Datorama instance, but they don’t have the talent, time, or resources to self-implement, they often engage a certified partner.

An implementation partner’s job is to successfully onboard, educate, and build your solution. There are partners with just a few months of experience, and others with eight or more. Salesforce also maintains a savvy professional services team to help clients navigate their Datorama implementation.

When considering a certified implementation partner, you should evaluate them on four criteria:

  • Can that partner measurably improve your analytics process efficiency including onboarding, connecting, visualizing, expanding, and educating your stakeholder.
  • Can your partner improve your marketing campaign effectiveness?
  • Can your partner improve your marketing spend insights or related conversion factors?
  • Is your partner constantly learning, innovating, and contributing thought leadership to the broader analytics community?
  • Can they quickly understand your business and significantly elevate your understanding of the platform?

How Much Is a Certified Datorama Implementation Partner?

The cost of working with a certified Datorama implementation partner can vary based on the scope of your project, number of data sources, the complexity of your implementation, and the partner’s billing rates.

Billing rates can vary by partner experience and area of specialization and range from as little as $100USD per hour to as much as $275USD per hour.

Why Work with a Certified Implementation Partner?

Data management projects can be messy, complex, and time-consuming. For moderately complex projects, you can expect to spend 40 to 60 hours per week or more, on your Datorama implementation. It may seem easier to self-implement, but you’ll recuperate your investment quicker with the help of professional services and you’ll likely make fewer costly mistakes.

How Long Does the Average Datorama Project Take to Implement?

While data projects can be difficult to scope, there are some general guidelines when considering the duration of your project and its resources.

Relatively simple Datorama projects, with four to six data sources, can take between four and six weeks to build. Data sources that only require pre-built API connections may save a week or two. Moderate to semi-complex Datorama implementation projects, with eight to 12 data sources, can take between eight to ten weeks to deploy.

Finally, complex Datorama implementation projects, with 15 to 25 or more data sources, can take between 14 to 18 weeks to deploy. However, to drive a faster time to value, we recommend you break your project further into phases or “sprints.”

Note: There are several variables that should be considered when estimating the cost of a partner led projects vs. self-implementation. The final pricing estimates may vary.

Datorama Implementation Support

Decision Foundry is a Salesforce, independent software vendor, managed services provider, and a certified award-winning Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration partner. Decision Foundry closes the gap between data accessibility, platform adoption and business impact. Our consulting services include the integration of Data Cloud, Account, Engagement, Personalization, Tableau, and Intelligence.

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