Remarkable Commerce Platform Commercials
In this article, I’ll run through how our commercial pricing stacks up against mainstream platforms, where there have been many changes over the last 18 months and pricing has been adjusted to be more feasible for smaller retailers.
Budgeting for a replatforming project is hard, especially without much direct experience, and so there are many elements of a project which often get overlooked or missed - this leads to dissatisfaction or unhappiness with the entire project, even if growth is realised. Most companies consider things like licensing fees, set-up/build costs and ongoing development but fail to consider costs for future maintenance or the expenses that come with new integrations, various third party costs, consultants and even contingency against different areas. Therefore, we recommend when budgeting for your new eCommerce platform, that you break down your costs into annual forecasts for at least 3 years in the future.
For the build fee, we are priced fairly and competitively.
Our build fee is priced very competitively, simply because of our ability to launch a retailer on the Remarkable Commerce platform within 6 months or less. A 6 month re-platform project costs between £60,000 to £100,000, depending on complexity and the scope of build. This typically involves: 1x full-time backend developer, 1x full-time frontend UX developer, and several consultants including project management, SEO services and enterprise solution architects - all working collaboratively for the 6 month project.
Although other platform build project durations are much longer (say 12 to 18 months on average), the associated build costs reflect this, and for a mid-sized retailer, a build cost will range between £100,000 and £500,000.
For ongoing fees, we approach this with a unique model.
With most of the retailers we work with being mid-market (within the ~£5m – £100m bracket), their previous experience is often polarised - either they come from an experience of paying a monthly commission fee for their platform (with the average percentage being around 2-3%), or, paying a monthly licence fee that is based on revenue generated through the site(s). Either way, pricing is revenue based and if your sales begin skyrocketing, you continue giving 2-3% of that revenue to a platform which has done no extra work, making this unfair and commercially frustrating.
Remarkable is different - our monthly licence fee is based solely on website traffic, not revenue. The monthly licence fee covers unlimited use of the Remarkable Commerce platform for an unlimited number of admin’ users, an unlimited number of API calls, several product variations, phone and email technical support during office hours, and maintenance of servers, databases, error logs, third-parties, and browsers, and agile technology that can be tailored to your exact request.
Alternatively, we can discuss a monthly development retainer - where Remarkable provide a team of highly specialised developers, architects, marketers, strategists and account managers, on a retained monthly agreement. Typically, retainers begin at around £10,000 per month for your own team.
Comparing this ongoing licence fee scenario with other platforms…
The Salesforce Commerce Cloud (ex-Demandware) licensing model is based on a retailer’s gross merchandise volume (GMV), with the average percentage previously being around 2% – 3%. However, I have previously seen the monthly licensing costs go to ~1.5%, but for much higher volume retailers or strategic cases (where revenue is above £500m p/a). The GMV percentage is based on forecasted growth commitments and is paid annually based on performance. I’ve also heard of SFCC penalising retailers who fail to meet their growth commitments, and having additional fees to pay.
As part of the licensing cost, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is provided as a SaaS solution, with their team taking care of platform maintenance, hosting / server management, pre-peak planning & provisioning, CDN management, code quality assessment / validation, upgrades etc. All actual development work (such as site design updates, new integrations, code changes to functions and features), are all completed by your chosen agency - which is an additional cost to your platform licence.
Shopify have fixed levels for licensing. With Shopify Payments, which is available in some countries, 0% transaction fees apply. For enterprise-level Shopify Plus minimum monthly fees start at £1,575 plus GMV (between 0.8% and 1.8%). Build costs for larger sites typically range between £30,000 and £100,000, depending on requirements. Again, development agency costs are in addition.
And for Magento/Adobe Commerce, licensing fees start around £2k per month, obviously on top of the website build / development costs. Although the licensing costs start relatively sensible, this can get really expensive depending on the size of your business. Amongst other factors, Magento now works to GMV (gross-merchandising-volume) brackets – taking between 2% and 3% of your monthly revenue.
The Remarkable Commerce Platform proposition differs significantly and is completely tailored for each retailer, it is not an “off the shelf” SaaS offering like its competitors. There are no GMV or commission costs, and the licensing charge is simply based on average monthly sessions with tiered price ranges.
To fairly compare these commercial elements, I have created the below comparison chart based on the following retailer profile:
£10m p/a online revenue, with 3m annual website sessions
Has 10,000 items
A dedicated eCommerce team of 4
Remarkable Commerce | Shopify Plus | Magento/Adobe Commerce | Salesforce Commerce Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Build Project Fee | £80,000 | £100,000 | £150,000 | £200,000 |
Monthly Platform Licence | £3,500 fixed fee | £15,000 (2%) | £25,000 (3%) | £25,000 (3%) |
Agency BAU Development | £8,000 per month | £6,000 per month | £8,000 per month | £10,000 per month |
Monthly Hosting Fee | £2,000 | Included | £3,000 | Included |
Three Year Cost of Ownership | £566,000 | £856,000 | £1,446,000 | £1,532,000 |
It goes without saying that each platform comes with pro’s and con’s, particularly around agility and flexibility where Remarkable excels - however, it is clear that if cost and ROI is a key element to your re-platforming project, Remarkable Commerce is seen favourably.
When reviewing TCO (total cost of ownership), a typical model will span 3-5 years, which is the length of time expected until software becomes end-of-life and ready for upgrade. With Remarkable Commerce, the TCO starts low, and remains low. Typically, the build development is low enough to be OpEx (operating expenses), instead of CapEx (capital expenditure).
If you are a retailer with revenue above £5m p/a, and need a platform that will help you accelerate growth, with a commercially transparent proposition, then we would welcome a discussion.
