The guiding principles
Many customers were pointing out the imperfections of our old pricing: the free tier had too few assets and too narrow limits; the jump from self-service to enterprise was too large; having many different limits was confusing (if not annoying). All these observations made a ton of sense.
The new pricing fixes all these problems, making the plans correspond more closely to real customer needs. We've reworked the plans, increasing the differences between them, and making them distinct not only in terms of limits, but also feature-wise. Many limits (such as the number of spaces, content types, or the API bandwidth) were removed, as they just added extra confusion into choosing the best plan.
Our core intention was to simplify the choice of the plan, so that it's easier to start using Contentful — first trying it on the free plan, then choosing the plan that reflects the specific customer's needs best; the one that brings the most value.
No changes for existing customers
Nothing will change for all the customers who have been building projects with Contentful up to this day. If you like your old plan better for certain reasons, you're most welcome to keep it!
Much more powerful free plan
The free plan is now much better: for instance, you can now host up to 10,000 entries and assets with the free plan, as opposed to 1,000 entries and 100 assets earlier. You can have 9,900 entries and 100 assets, or 5,000 entries and 5,000 assets — it's all the same. Next, there's on-demand extra usage available! Read on.
Pay-as-you-go extra usage
You can now go beyond the limits (even without switching to a paid plan): for example, add one more user for just $20 a month, or get more room for entries and assets — $5/mo for every 1,000. This makes the plans quite flexible: in a way, you create your own custom plan and pay something like $20–30 a month just for the things you need — in case you don't want any extra features from the more expensive plans, like localization, roles and permissions, or better support. Check the exact prices in the Limits section.
The Large plan
To fill the gap between self-service and enterprise, we've introduced the Large plan, which is suitable for many cases where the Medium is not enough, but jumping to enterprise is currently out of budget. The Large plan comes with higher limits, better support, and extended role management.
Should I switch?
Maybe. We've already reached out to some customers for whom switching is a no-brainer. However, sometimes we simply don't know enough about what your plans are with Contentful to be able to guide you through plan selection: the exact price depends on your actual usage (the number of entries, assets, users, API calls, you name it), so this is a case-by-case decision. As a rule of thumb, at least 4 out of 5 accounts should be better off with the new pricing.
Don't hesitate to contact our support — we'll help you figure out how much you'll benefit from switching.
Transition Q&A
What is additional usage? How does it work?
When using Contentful it is common to want another user or a few more API calls. The new plans have added this feature by allowing for additional usage.
To see how this works, compare the old plus plan with the Large plan, both of which come with 1M API calls per month. The plus plan had hard limits – your 1,000,001st API call would not go through. The Large plan, on the other hand, allows you to go further: if you want 1,000 additional API calls it costs you $0.08 (or $0.10 on the medium plan and $0.15 on the small plan).
Additional usage is convenient because payment is automatic. At the end of your billing period you are simply charged for what you use.
The new plans come with fewer API calls – why’s that?
To be clear: nobody has to change. If you like the number of API calls that you have, keep what you’ve got. The API calls that come with the new plans, however, are a better fit.
Some limits on the old plans were too loose while others were too tight; users would hit some limits quickly but never come close to others. With this in mind, the new plans are tuned to actual usage. We removed most of the old limitations (see the next question) and adjusted our offerings to reflect how our users use Contentful – API calls included. The new plans suit users’ API usage better and, with additional usage, provide you with any additional API calls you might need.
The new plans don’t mention spaces, API bandwidth, or content types. What’s going on here?
While the old plans placed various limits on the number of spaces, the number of content types, and on API bandwidth, the new plans remove these restrictions altogether. This way all users have the opportunity to get more out of Contentful.
What are records?
The old plans placed separate limits on entries and assets. The new plans count both together as records – where a record is either an asset or an entry.
Why records?
Contentful is different things to different people. It can power image galleries, knowledge bases, and everything in between.
On the old plans some users would run out of entries without uploading any assets – or, vice versa, run out of assets but only have a few entries. Counting assets and entries separately has proven too restrictive in cases like these.
With records it is now easier to fit Contentful to your needs. Take the medium plan, for instance, which comes with 25k records. Use 20k records for assets and 5k for entries, 10k for assets and 15k for entries, or 25k for assets and 0 for entries – use Contentful as you please.
The new plans mention extra roles. What are these and what do they do?
The roles that come with the new plans are:
- Small - Admin, Developer, Editor
- Medium - Everything above plus Author
- Large - Everything above plus Freelancer and Translator
As for the abilities these roles have:
- Admin - Can do everything, including work with entries, create and update content types, configure space settings and work with API keys
- Developer - Can only read entries and assets, create and update API keys
- Editor - Can work with entries, does not have access to content types, API keys or space settings
- Author - Can do everything an editor can do except for deleting, (un)publishing, (un)archiving entries
- Freelancer - Can work only with his own entries, can't see the content of other people, can't (un)publish, (un)archive his own entries
- Translator - Can only work in the assigned language, can't create, delete, (un)publish, (un)archive any entries
More questions?
If you have any questions about this change, please do contact our support — we reply fast and nicely.
This is the home for all your content
This change in pricing reflects our bigger goal — to make Contentful an industry standard when it comes to all things content. It's a place where you put all your texts, images, videos, and then take them to a variety of screens, show it across continents, display it to many many readers and viewers. We believe that good content deserves a good home, so we're putting our best efforts into making Contentful the default choice as a home for all your content, and providing you with the best service out there.
With the new powerful free plan that enables not just creating "hello world" kind of experiments, but also building real, production-ready websites and apps, we expect more and more people to join and enjoy Contentful, and stay on the frontier of modern content management. Thank you for being with us!
