Mixpanel is a powerful, self-serve analytics platform that gives everyone in your organization actionable insights to help your business grow. Most companies (including Hudled) start by using their $50K free credits for one year, then upgrade to one of their paid plans via sales.
Before you start negotiating a discount with Mixpanel, you must understand what levers you can pull to maximise the ROI on your time spent.
To help with this, we've analyzed hundreds of Mixpanel contracts and millions of dollars of spend to help you understand what levers you can pull in the following scenarios:
Managing a Mixpanel renewal when your contract value is increasing:
When your contract increases, it’s because your MTU’s (monthly tracked users) are going up. It’s critical that you accurately forecast how these costs will grow because your new contract is based on this number. When you negotiate Mixpanel, the levers you can pull are:
- Billing structure: Review the pricing structure, and how the MTU cost goes down at different stages. It may appear better to go higher, because the price is lower. The problem is, if you don’t use the MTU’s you will be overpaying.
- Billing frequency: Paying upfront can secure a higher discount with Mixpanel.
- Time: Conversations need to kick off 90 days in advance. The closer to your renewal date, the less leverage you have.
- Push for higher discounts: Analytics companies are known for offering generous discounts. Depending on your MTU’s, its common for companies to receive 40% or higher.
- Competition: The analytics space is highly competitive. Determine what Amplitude, Hotjar, or other analytics companies charge.
- Benchmark price: Review Hudled's engineering and analytics pricing insights to gather information on what other companies similar to yours are paying and the best terms that are offered.
Managing a Mixpanel renewal when your contract value is staying the same:
If you are content with your current discount, there is no need to engage in negotiations. Your contract can be auto-renewed without the need for additional time investment. However, if you do decide to negotiate with Mixpanel, the levers you can pull are:
- Billing frequency: It's unlikely you can negotiate the best possible terms and discounts without material changes in your contract. There may be an opportunity for you to get a bigger discount if you pay annually.
- Competition: Research what other Analytics charge for MTU's using Hudled’s engineering and analytics pricing insights. If you have data on a competitive tool, your leverage increases.
- Negotiation period: 30 days is a sufficient time frame to conduct productive conversation during negotiations.
Managing a Mixpanel renewal when your contract value is decreasing
When your contract with Mixpanel decreases, the chances of successfully negotiating a significant discount may be low. The bargaining power is limited, and it may be difficult for the Mixpanel account managers to secure approval for significant reductions. However, there are still a few levers you can pull:
- Creating Sympathy: Share a convincing story about the reasons for needing to reduce costs as a negotiation strategy. Whatever you share here should be genuine.
- Rollover unused MTU's: If you had overestimated the number of MTU's for the current contract term, explore the possibility of transferring the credits to the next contract year.
- Temporary discount: You can negotiate a temporary discount e.g. 25% off for six months until you close your next round of investment. This is normally approved on a case-by-case basis.
- Competition: Find out what other companies charge e.g. Hotjar. It's not ideal to migrate, but you can it as a reference point.
- Negotiation period: 30 days is a sufficient time frame to conduct productive conversations during the negotiations.
Negotiate a discount with Mixpanel when purchasing for the first time:
You will be able to negotiate a discount with Mixpanel when you purchase for the first time. Many factors will impact the terms, and having access to Mixpanel pricing insights will help. The levers you can pull are:
- (RFP) Request for proposal: Vendors will take you more seriously and typically offer higher discounts when they have to tender for your business. Note that this strategy is more effective for larger companies.
- Billing frequency: Use Hudled's Mixpanel pricing insights to find out what companies like you are paying and what the best terms that are offered are.
- Time: Start speaking to Mixpanel at the end of the financial year. If that's not possible, the end of the quarter or month will increase your chances of a higher discount.
- Urgency: See if there's an opportunity to improve the deal terms if you close faster.
- Competition: Use competitor pricing to your advantage. It's likely to help you negotiate a lower price.
It’s essential to remember that cost is just one factor any business needs to consider when purchasing or renewing SaaS tools like Mixpanel.
Would you like more pricing insights?
At Hudled, we’re building a SaaS intelligence platform to manage the full lifecycle of your SaaS stack. Our data-driven approach enables you to leverage data to buy the right tools at the best price. To ensure you're paying the best price across your entire SaaS stack, get started for free and request a SaaS audit.
Please note the author generated this text in part with GPT-3, OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model. Upon generating draft language, the author reviewed, edited, and revised the language of this publication
