mParticle has a new pricing model called value-based pricing (VBP). With VBP, mParticle meters your usage across multiple billing items and draws down from pre-paid mParticle Credits at the end of each billing period. Billing items include events and audiences and a few other factors.
Your contract specifies a price per unit (unit price) for each billing item. Most billing items are in units of one million event counts, but a few items are different, as explained later in this topic.
mParticle Credits are a universal currency that mParticle customers can use to buy any product on the mParticle platform.
Your company makes an upfront contractual credit commitment to unlock access to a discounted rate for mParticle Credits based on your usage. The higher the minimum commitment, the higher the discount tier that is available. You can also choose to purchase additional mParticle Credits at any time.
At the end of each billing cycle, mParticle measures your usage, and then calculates the number of mParticle Credits consumed, using the pricing in your contract. Remember that events are counted in units of one million (1M).
Assume your contract specified the following unit prices in mParticle Credits (mPCs) for three billable items:
In one billing period you use the following quantities:
The total mPCs consumed for the billing period is 518: 300 + 148 + 70
This guide explains how mParticle calculates the quantities for each billable item. Each quantity is then multiplied by the unit price in your contract to determine the number of mPCs used for the billing period.
To ensure you receive the fairest usage calculation, mParticle evaluates all billable items as described in the following sections.
Use the following quick reference table to understand at a glance how quantities are calculated. Each quantity calculation is explained in detail after the table.
Customers who have value based pricing contracts with mParticle receive a Credit Usage Report at the end of each billing period directly from their mParticle account manager.
Your credit usage report breaks down your total credit usage per event tier and any billable items from the past billing period by each organization, account, and workspace on your contract.
The following quick-reference table lists the billable items for credit usage calculations.
Factor |
Calculation |
|---|---|
| Events ingested in each event tier | Greater of: number of event units ingested or number of event units after All Output rules applied. See Tiered Events for details. |
| Additional long-term retention | Number of additional storage units purchased, multiplied by the sum of Preserve and Personalize Tier event units |
| Additional Real-Time Audience Storage Lookback | Number of additional storage units purchased, multiplied by Personalize Tier event units |
| Eventless batches | Counted as one Personalize tier event |
| Real-time products | Per workspace, the number of active real-time products minus five, and if the number is greater than zero, multiply it by the number of Personalize tier event units. See Real-time products for details. |
| Real-time invocations | Number of real-time invocations. See Real-time invocation calculation for details. |
| mParticle-hosted rule invocations | Number of mParticle-hosted rules invoked in a billing period (retries not included) |
| Backfill and data replays | Number of event units retrieved from storage and used in audience calculations or data replays |
| Profile API | Excluded from usage calculation. See Profile API calcluation for block pricing details. |
| Cortex | Multiply the number of active IAs and the number of event units used by Cortex from mParticle in a billing period. |
| Indicative | Number of events used by Indicative in a billing period |
The usage for each billable item listed in the quick-reference table is calculated and the total value is drawn down as mPCs each billing period.
Each event is a data point that records an action taken by a user in your app or system.
Some events matter more to you than others. mParticle provides three tiers to help you map event types to how they are used, and billed, in the platform:
| Event Tier | Availability |
|---|---|
| Connect | Data is not stored in mParticle, but can be ingested and forwarded. The data is also used for profile enrichment. Because Connect tier events aren’t stored, they won’t be visible in the User Activity view. |
| Preserve | Events marked as Preserve are ingested, stored, and forwarded but are not used in real-time evaluations for audiences or calculated attributes. The data is still available for replaying to third party tools, and for backfills of calculated attributes and standard audience creation. By default, these events are stored for 12 months. If you need the events to be stored for longer, an additional charge applies. |
| Personalize | This tier is the default for all events and related data collected as part of an mParticle ingestion. Events are ingested, available for evaluation in audiences and calculated attributes, stored, and forwarded. By default, these events are available in hot-storage for lookbacks for 30 days. If you need the lookback period to be longer, an additional charge applies. |
To calculate the quantity of events, count the number of event units in each tier. Use the larger of:
A few additional factors affect event usage calculations:
Additional long-term retention for events is a billable item. For example, if you purchased two six-month units for an additional twelve months of long-term storage for Preserve and Personalize tier events, those extra storage units are calculated and included in your credit draw down.
Additional Real-Time Audience Storage Lookback (specified in your contract) is a billable item. For example, if you purchased two 30-day units for an additional 60 days of storage for Preserve and Personalize tier events, those extra units are calculated and included in your credit draw down.
Batches that are sent server-to-server with only user attributes or user identities but no events are called eventless batches.
Each eventless batch is counted as one Personalize tier event. If the event tier is not specified in your contract, we count each Eventless Batch as one event of the lowest tier available in your contract.
Active real-time products include Real Time Audiences and Calculated Attributes.
Real-time products are metered per workspace on two dimensions:
Number of active products in a given billing period
The largest number of active real-time audiences and calculated attributes at any point in the given billing period. Five real-time audiences are included in the model, so mParticle subtracts five before using this number to calculate credit usage.
Number of Personalize tier events in the same billing period
Total count of Personalize tier event units ingested in mParticle based on the Event metering logic above.
Some early VBP customers are on a version of the pricing model where real-time products are priced based on the number of real-time invocations.
mParticle-hosted rules are lambda functions that mParticle maintains and administers on behalf of customers in mParticle’s AWS instance.
Note the following:
Customers sometime have to retrieve events from long-term storage and evaluate them for standard audiences or real-time audiences with Unlimited Lookback enabled. Customers may also request that Support perform a data replay. For example, you may create a new audience, a new calculated attribute or request a historical data replay from mParticle Support.
Profile API can be used to query identities, user memberships, and other data available on an mParticle User Profile, anywhere you can make an HTTP request.
In the VBP model, Profile API is provisioned in bands of 50 queries per second. This is not a usage-based charge. We amortize the total cost of Profile API across the duration of the contract.
Customers can use mParticle’s Cortex machine learning engine to create Intelligent Attributes (IAs). IAs are attributes generated by predictions, look-alikes, and classification models.
Cortex usage is metered on two dimensions:
Number of active intelligent attributes (IA)
An active IA is defined as an IA which has been trained or had predictions run on it at least once in the previous billing period.
Events forwarded to Cortex
Number of event units forwarded to Cortex from mParticle in a given billing period.
Indicative is mParticle’s customer analytics tool that enables product and data teams to move beyond the limitations of traditional BI tools to explore user behavior and engage customers.
Indicative usage is metered based on the number of events used in Indicative analysis.
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