Transparent Pricing

 Elegant, Flexible, Fast — Learn how marketers unlock new revenue with Candid

(And why our competitors don't publish pricing ;-)

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One CMS For All Social Channels - Now Supporting

NEW! As of Sept, 2018 we're offering FREE licenses for qualifying social enterprises, non-profits, and bloggers* (some conditions apply)

 Frequently Asked Questions

How long are your contracts?

Our typical contract length is 1 year paid upfront. Why? We've found customers that commit to a full year with Candid see better results. We used to offer monthly plans but they did not include ongoing strategy sessions that allowed teams to use the product flexibly. We want to work with brands that share a deep commitment to community and will go the extra mile to see them succeed.

How easy is it to integrate Candid into my store or site?

It's extremely simple, whether you're on Demandware, Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, Sitecore, WordPress, or something else. You won't find costly, drawn-out integrations or on-boarding fees here. Our displays install in seconds on any platform and we're happy to offer free installation on all annual plans. Candid was built from the ground up in 2012 for e‑commerce, including deep support for merchandizing, internationalization, and the attribution required to reveal the business impact of earned vs. owned content.

What's the catch? Why is there a big price gap between you and your core competitors?

Thanks for noticing! None of our direct competitors publish pricing and reliable comparisons are difficult to find. Most comparable visual marketing platforms charge 3-6x more but offer less automation and flexibility.

These businesses are generally much larger (sizeable inside sales & marketing overhead, longer sales cycles) and operate in high-cost environments. Their early customers may have enjoyed competitive rates but newcomers face rising fees in 2018 as these platforms strive for next growth rounds. The VC model for Enterprise software is unforgiving and requires constant revenue expansion and upselling across key accounts (if you're a successful client, be prepared to pay more).

Most SaaS platforms selling to Enterprise clients have pricing models that reflect the effort required to sell into larger organizations more than they reflect the actual cost and quality of the underlying service. Pricing is often used as a signal of the value of a product and how seriously larger organizations should take it.

We think change is overdue. We are a smaller team with a core strength in technology and a philosophy of aggressively pricing at or near cost, not as a % of revenue. Long term partnerships in the fluid social commerce landscape require sustainable pricing and transparency, we've found a way to make it work for both sides.

How can I be sure I'm going to see real conversion gains?

We've seen a lot of A/B tests over the years on the value of lifestyle community content over traditional photography and are more confident than ever that marketers should double down on this asset class.

That being said, if you're not seeing new incremental revenue, it's generally because your integration lacks...

  • Exposure: General in-bound traffic is low; Not deployed broadly enough across homepage, category pages, PDPs; Placement is too far down the page; Poor creative surrounding the displays (call to action, branded hashtags, direct upload, etc); Poor reinforcement of branded hashtags via email + packaging; Lack of amplification celebrating community engagement
  • Community: Lack of active participation leading to stale displays (i.e. product posts that are months or years old); Lack of earned or paid content content creating a lopsided, inauthentic content mix
  • Consistency: Not well merchandised (at least 1-4 products or categories mapped, not leading to 404s or sold-out inventory); Inconsistencies in visual composition (content not on brand, visual identity not established via paid and owned content)

What makes Candid better, other than price?

After 7+ years, we've gotten to know our competition well. We're confident our experience, speed and pricing set us apart.

Mastering social proof and community engagement ultimately requires the right blend of technology and strategy. Candid is that blend. Our lean approach means faster integrations, daily enhancements, fewer organizational layers and deeper insights and access for partners. Each member of our team has a 360° view into the technology and strategy of the world's leading brands and that expertise is shared with partners daily.

Tooling is only part of the equation. Rather than charge $25-75K in license fees for the platform alone, we'll help you stretch your budget across creative, distribution and tooling to get real results. With a ROAS of 6-10X, those savings can quickly multiply.

All I want is Shoppable Instagram, I don't understand the other features or why any of it is necessary?

The Essentials include on-site Shoppable Instagram. There are performance benefits to the hosted version included under Premium but if you prefer to embed it on your site, The Essentials will do. While 'Shoppable Instagram' is certainly a popular feature, there are other areas where community content backed by automated workflows can dramatically impact business results. Candid does much more espcially around active social listening.

Design is extremely important to us, can we deploy Candid without compromising on aesthetics?

There are dozens of custom themes and variations of the core Candid displays to choose from. We've seen strong interest in custom skins and will soon be launching a theme store to allow developers and designers to license their themes for others to use. If none of the available themes meet your requirements, your designer can easily build a tailored one or you can have our team implement the design for you.

The other platform said they can do X, Y and Z. Can you do that?

Few have more experience than the Visual Commerce pioneers who launched in 2012. Tier-1 social platform developers operate on a level playing field: we enjoy unfettered access to the legacy Instagram Platform API, the new Instagram Graph API, and the Facebook Marketing API. We choose to operate a thin/light platform (the "pure play" option for UGC) with a focus on revenue optimization for brands, not a comprehensive "suite" gunning for a larger share of wallet. If you can make the case for a feature we don't have, we'll certainly consider it in the next build (assuming it's not a use-case we're intentionally avoiding).

Why would you intentionally avoid certain use-cases?

We have better visibility than most and stay focused on use-cases that are complimentary to the social platforms and their product roadmaps. Some vendors find workarounds for highly requested features that are often in violation of the terms of service, we prefer to play the long game and avoid gimmicks. Our 6 years of market leadership reflects this.

I want to give my team some customization options, can you help?

Absolutely, we keep a recent deck of reference implementations to share — just ask! We obsess over design, branding, and blended displays that don't stand out as 3rd party components. We're constantly amazed at the differentiated displays that partners build to achieve a cohesive, on-brand look that's uniquely their own.

What about data portability?

We love data portability and go to great lengths to make sure customers can export their data. (We’re programmers at heart and believe in open systems and a level playing field.) If you're already using a visual marketing platform, we may be able to automatically import your curated content (along with product relationships) into Candid so you can continue where you left off.

Do you only work with Instagram?

No, our strategic alliance is with Instagram because we believe they will dominate the landscape for visual storytelling but we operate a platform agnostic CMS that caters to media across the visual web (Snapchat, Vine, Vimeo, Tumblr, Twitter, etc).

I'm sold on the results but what's the time commitment required for moderation?

We offer a few automation options to simplify moderation and deliver a Content as a Service (CaaS) solution. Brands that choose to do their own should plan for approximately 1-2 hrs/week. If you prefer to keep internal resources focused elsewhere should ask about turnkey moderation services.

What about multi-country and multi-language deployments, do you automate the workflow?

Have you noticed we're Canadian? Yes, we've automated the ability to localize product names and descriptions based on a region’s native language, along with many other internationalization scenarios to support global teams.

We're interested! What's the first step?

All we need is a product feed, ideally one that includes product photos on white backgrounds which improve consistency and can increase conversions.

How do you work with agencies?

Candid thrives on partnerships. We rely on partners for our global reach and offer strong incentives to businesses that help us scale.

*How does the 14-day trial work?

If you're not yet a Candid customer but already using an advanced Visual Marketing platform (similar to Olapic or Curalate) and curious about Candid please get in touch and try the Essentials or Premium for 14-days without a contract or commitment. We'd love your input!


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