Costs and pricing
Part of Customer data platform costs: a whole-life budget template with a worked £82,500 example
Customer data platform pricing compared without averaging incompatible units
Compare manual, existing, built, hosted and managed CDP cost structures for one England journey without averaging incompatible commercial units.
What to take away
- Five routes carry one England membership journey: manual work, existing systems, a buyer-built service, a hosted edition and managed integration. No single route wins on price alone.
- Monthly tracked users, events, profiles, storage and consultancy hours are different units, so no market average can stand in for a quotation.
- No exact supplier quotation met the required UK edition, currency, VAT, unit and term fields on 6 September 2026. Every figure here is a public list price or typical range.
- Route cost equals verified supplier cash plus approved buyer labour plus assurance, operation, change, renewal and exit, over one approved period.
- Privacy, security, accessibility and exit stay as pass or fail gates outside cost scoring.
One journey, five charging structures
Each route must deliver the same England membership journey: an authorised account, billing and support events, bounded identity links, correction and suppression, and one audience export. The five delivery routes compared without a winner sets out that shared specification.
Charging structure and 2026 public price signal
- Current manual
- HubSpot Marketing Hub Starter typically from $20 per month for 1,000 contacts; Mailchimp Standard typically from $20 per month for 500 contacts; Google Sheets free
- Existing systems
- Salesforce Sales Cloud Starter from $25 per user per month; HubSpot Operations Hub Starter typically from $20 per month; Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Professional from $65 per user per month
- Buyer-built
- AWS EC2 from around $0.01 per hour; S3 from around $0.023 per GB per month; managed PostgreSQL from around $15 per month; England contractor day rates typically £500 to £900
- Hosted edition
- Segment Team typically from $120 per month for 10,000 monthly tracked users; RudderStack Growth typically from $500 per month for 5 million events; Adobe Real-Time CDP typically from $1,250 per month; Salesforce Data Cloud typically from $1,800 per month
- Managed integration
- England consultancy day rates typically £600 to £1,200 per consultant; fixed-scope CDP integration typically £25,000 to £150,000
Unit or limit
- Current manual
- contacts, sends, seats
- Existing systems
- users, records, workflow runs
- Buyer-built
- events, storage, engineering hours
- Hosted edition
- tracked users, rows, events, profiles
- Managed integration
- hours, deliverables, milestones
Figures are public list prices or typical ranges, not quotations.
Five CDP routes compared
Manual
- Charging structure
- internal effort
- Buyer exposure
- correction and delay
- Required evidence
- recorded work
Existing
- Charging structure
- contract plus config
- Buyer exposure
- connectors and renewal
- Required evidence
- schedules and usage
Buyer-built
- Charging structure
- build and operation
- Buyer exposure
- engineering and recovery
- Required evidence
- work plan
Hosted
- Charging structure
- fixed and usage
- Buyer exposure
- profiles and events
- Required evidence
- exact quote
Units are not interchangeable. A profile tariff needs a profile definition plus rules for duplicates, unknown records, inactivity and deletion. Event pricing needs the countable event, including retries and rejected events. Storage needs measurement and retention, and service hours need deliverables and approval rules.
Record every quotation field
- Supplier entity, service, edition, UK availability and source date.
- Currency, VAT presentation, unit, quantity and period.
- Minimum term, included usage, mandatory add-ons, overage and promotion.
- Renewal terms and exit conditions.
- Unknown fields left blank rather than borrowed elsewhere.
HMRC guidance on charging VAT requires VAT-registered suppliers to show VAT information separately on invoices. It does not decide how a cross-border service should be accounted for, so obtain named professional review.
A read of six contract areas before signing covers exit, data return and liability.
Quotation fields to record
- Supplier entity and service
- Edition and UK availability
- Source date and currency
- VAT presentation and unit
- Quantity, period and minimum term
- Included usage and mandatory add-ons
- Overage, promotion, renewal and exit
Example: route cost for one England membership journey
The formula uses verified supplier cash, approved buyer labour, assurance, operation, change, renewal and exit. An illustrative run for the hosted edition over twelve months:
Route cost for one England membership journey
- Verified supplier cashillustrative £18,000.
- Approved buyer labourillustrative 220 hours at an approved loaded rate, giving £15,400.
- Assurance, operation and changeillustrative £6,000.
- Renewal and exit allowancesillustrative £4,000 for export, deletion and transition.
- Route costillustrative £43,400 for the period.
Every figure is illustrative and must be replaced with a supplier quotation and an approved internal rate. Apply the same five steps to the other four routes.
Compare the whole lifecycle
- Data inventory and identity-rule design
- Migration, privacy review and contracts
- Security, accessibility, testing and monitoring
- Correction, rights handling and support
- Renewal and departure
The government's older total cost of ownership note covers public-sector technology procurement. Its boundary is that lifetime comparison runs past transition to exit, once capability and security are met.
Security effort differs by route but never disappears. NCSC supplier assurance prompts ask buyers to examine networks, cloud services, access and incident response.
Test how the charge behaves when a buyer corrects or deletes a record. A tariff that bills erased or merged profiles carries different exposure from one that counts active records.
Keep privacy and PECR, identity accuracy, security, accessibility and exit as pass or fail gates outside cost scoring. The privacy review mapping without a chosen lawful basis explains how to record that gate. Report HOLD and request a comparable quotation when evidence is incomplete.
Common questions
Are these figures supplier quotations?
No exact supplier quotation met the required UK edition, currency, VAT, unit and term fields for the England journey. The figures are 2026 public list prices or typical ranges, not quotations.
How should privacy and security be treated?
Treat privacy and PECR, identity accuracy, security, accessibility and exit as pass or fail gates outside cost scoring. Price cannot rescue a route that fails an essential gate.
Which route wins?
None. The routes stay unranked because their units differ and no comparable quotation was available. A lower unit price can still lose once correction, suppression and exit are costed.
