0
vendors publishing a list price for a real configuration
No vendor profiled publishes a list price for the configuration a buyer will actually run. A directory that prints one anyway is guessing. Here is what Stackmark records instead, and how the cost model turns it into a range.
The most common request Stackmark receives is for a price. The most common thing a vendor will not publish is a price. Those two facts set the shape of the cost model on this site.
Vendors will say, in documentation and in analyst briefings, roughly where they sit: entry, mid-market, upper mid-market, enterprise. They will say it because it is how they qualify leads. Stackmark records that statement as a cost band and cites where it came from.
The estimator takes named users, legal entities, modules in scope, deployment model and cost band, and returns three ranges: software in year one, implementation, and annual run cost thereafter. Each range is a published multiplier applied to a published base. The assumptions are printed beneath the figures on every visit, because they are the whole basis of the number.
A range you can defend is worth more to a committee than a figure you cannot.
Treat the output as the envelope a serious quote should land inside. A quote well outside it is not wrong, but it needs an explanation, and the assumptions list tells you which one to ask for.
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profiled systems document an AI module
Four of the systems Stackmark profiles document an AI module. In demonstrations the layer looks finished. In contracts it is often a roadmap. Here is how to tell the two apart before the shortlist is set.
11
systems sold only as multi-tenant cloud
Eleven profiled systems are sold only as multi-tenant cloud. That changes which questions matter: upgrade cadence and tenant isolation move to the top, and infrastructure sizing drops off the list entirely.
16
modules, each a category rather than a capability
A module list is a table of contents, not a scope. Two systems that both say ‘procurement’ can differ by an order of magnitude in what the word covers. A short guide to reading the list the way an implementer does.