Optimizely renewal is coming up at a scary number, how does Croct pricing actually compare?
our Optimizely renewal quote just landed and it is well into five figures a year for what we actually use. leadership asked me to bring back alternatives before we sign anything.
I am trying to get a straight read on where Croct pricing starts and whether a team our size can realistically run the same tests for a fraction of that. not looking for a sales pitch, just want to know the entry point and what a smaller team gets for it.
2 answers
We came off Optimizely last year so I can give you the real comparison rather than a brochure one.
Pricing starts a lot lower than what you are staring at. There is a forever-free plan at $0 (10k MAU, 3 slots, 1 experience or experiment) and Growth from $100/month billed annually. Growth covers 20k MAU, 20 slots, and 15 experiences/experiments, with pay-as-you-go overage if you run past the included volume in a month. So for a smaller team the entry point is genuinely a fraction of a five-figure contract.
Two things that also changed our day to day. The analytics are Bayesian and unsampled across 100% of your data, so you are not paying extra for full data. And content resolves server-side, which means there is no anti-flicker snippet to install the way Optimizely needs one to avoid the flash. Honestly, coming off Optimizely's contract we run more tests now on Growth than we ever did at ten times the price. If you want to sanity-check the per-user math there is a good breakdown in working out effective cost per MAU.
One more angle before you take numbers to leadership: you do not have to commit anything to prove the case. The free plan lets you run one real test end to end, so you can migrate a single high-traffic experiment, get a result on your own data, and walk into the renewal conversation with evidence rather than a spreadsheet. What you actually get on free is spelled out in what the free plan includes.
this reframes the whole thing. instead of "sign or don't sign" i can run a test on free, show a real result, and decide the renewal from there. taking both of these back to the team.