Unless you’re Rob Robinson, the first rule of eDiscovery pricing is we don’t talk about eDiscovery pricing, and the second rule is the same. But Remco Strijdonk is looking to change that with his eDiscovery software pricing calculator, published earlier this week!
The eDiscovery software pricing calculator is an initiative by Remco to promote open pricing within the world of eDiscovery. As you probably know, most eDiscovery software providers keep their pricing private.
The calculator currently includes five eDiscovery software providers that meet the following criteria:
- Pricing is publicly available on the website of the vendor (and not locked behind a login or email).
- The vendors are required to be cloud-based (SaaS) and feature at least: Data Processing, Document Review, and Production/Disclosure. In other words, you’ll need to be able to start and complete a full eDiscovery lifecycle on the platform.
Want to know which providers? You’ll have to click the link below!
The calculator is very straightforward to use. You can simply change any of the four variables (Data Processing GBs, Data Hosting GBs, Number of Cases, and Duration in Months) and pricing for all eDiscovery software providers will update accordingly. For more information on how the pricing costs are determined, there is a link with Plan & Calculation details for each eDiscovery software provider. There is also a Learn More link to find out more about each of their software solutions.
As Remco said: “The majority of eDiscovery software vendors keep their pricing private. I’m personally a big fan of transparency in pricing and feel like keeping pricing private is more often than not an excuse to get you on a call with sales. So, I figured, why not create a tool where one can calculate and compare pricing between vendors that have pricing published!”
Remco plans to add the capability to his eDiscovery software pricing calculator to allow for pricing calculations per case, where you would select the number of cases and can calculate the price per case individually. And he’s open to other suggestions to make the tool more useful to eDiscovery software buyers!
So, we have about 50 eDiscovery software solutions out there and public pricing is available for five of them. Sounds about right! 😉
The eDiscovery software pricing calculator is available here. You can also check out Remco’s other useful resources via the links at the top of that site!
So, what do you think? Will public pricing for eDiscovery software catch on? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.
Software pricing accounts for a very small portion of total eDiscovery cost. Very small differences in software performance swallow up whole the entire software cost. I.e. a 4% difference in software performance can account for (be equivalent to) 100% of the software cost.
And yet it’s like blood from a turnip to get folks to do actual side by side performance comparisons on their own, actual data, and see whether there are 4%, 8%, 12%, or more differences in performance. . That’s where attention should be focused.
I would love to set up a side by side performance comparison of eDiscovery software, Dr. J! But how is that going to happen? Most clients don’t have the time to perform their own. And most software providers won’t participate in an independent, public benchmark unless they can set the rules on how and what is benchmarked.
Most performance benchmarks I’ve seen have been done by the providers themselves, by their own set of chosen parameters. Guess who usually wins those?
Let’s talk offline. I can walk ya through it, and see what you think.