Anti-pitch hook · The vendors that won't quote
Quote-Only RUM Vendors 2026
Five of the 18 vendors in our matrix refuse to publish per-session, per-GB, or tier pricing. Here's why that matters operationally, and what published-pricing alternatives exist for each.
Direct answer
Why won't five vendors quote a price publicly?
Three reasons: enterprise-only positioning (Akamai mPulse, Splunk RUM), bundled-with-other-products economics (Splunk RUM inside Observability Cloud), and discount-protection strategy (Fullstory, Catchpoint enterprise, published list pricing would set the floor for every negotiation).
The five
From our 2026-06-16 verification pass:
- Akamai mPulse — no published rates, only mPulse Lite 30-day trial.
- Splunk RUM — no RUM-specific rate, bundled inside Splunk Observability Cloud.
- Pingdom RUM — pricing page returned 403 on automated verification.
- Fullstory paid tiers — generous 30K-session free tier but all paid tiers (Business, Advanced, Enterprise) are quote-only.
- Catchpoint enterprise — publishes $10K/yr Quick Start floor, but enterprise tiers are quote-only.
The operational cost of vendor opacity
- Longer procurement cycles. Published-pricing vendors can be in a $200/month contract within an hour. Quote-only vendors require discovery calls, vendor-side scoping, internal approvals, and contract review, typical 4-6 week procurement cycle.
- NDA before benchmarking. Vendor sales typically asks for an NDA before sharing rates, which prevents you from publishing the rate as a benchmark even internally, let alone for cross-vendor comparison.
- List-price-never-seen lock-in. Without a published list price, you have no reference point for re-negotiation. The vendor knows what you currently pay; you don't know what the “normal” market rate is.
- Year-on-year price increase exposure. Without a published rate card, year-2 renewals can include unexpected percentage uplifts that look reasonable in isolation but compound aggressively.
- Multi-product entanglement. Quote-only RUM frequently comes bundled with other products from the same vendor (Splunk Observability bundle, Akamai CDN bundle), making it hard to swap out RUM without unwinding the wider contract.
When quote-only is acceptable
- You are already a large customer of the vendor for another product (existing Akamai CDN customer adding mPulse, existing Splunk customer adding RUM).
- You have enterprise procurement processes that handle quote-only vendors routinely.
- You have a specific feature requirement that only a quote-only vendor offers.
- Your annual spend is large enough ($100K+) that the negotiation premium over list price exceeds the cost of running a quote-only procurement.
When quote-only is not acceptable
- You operate in startup / small business mode where fast procurement matters more than negotiation depth.
- You have public-sector or compliance constraints that require published pricing for procurement records.
- You want predictable, comparable budget forecasts for multi-vendor analysis.
- You are running a price-driven procurement and need verifiable benchmark rates.
Published-pricing alternatives by category
Instead of Akamai mPulse
- Catchpoint publishes a $10K/yr floor for RUM + synthetic.
- SpeedCurve publishes from $90/month for similar RUM + synthetic bundle.
- Datadog RUM publishes $4.50/1K sessions for direct RUM comparison.
Instead of Splunk RUM
- Dynatrace RUM publishes $2.25-$4.50/1K with published enterprise-tier pricing.
- Datadog RUM publishes $4.50/1K with full enterprise observability stack alongside.
- New Relic Browser publishes $0.40/GB ingest.
Instead of Pingdom RUM (unverified)
- Raygun publishes $80/yr Basic for 100K sessions/month.
- Sematext Experience publishes $9/month Basic for 5K sessions.
- Cloudflare Web Analytics is free for Core Web Vitals only.
Instead of Fullstory paid tiers
- LogRocket publishes $69/month Core for 10K sessions, $295/month Team for 50K.
- Sentry publishes $26/month Team with replay.
- Hotjar publishes $39-$213/month for replay-only.
Instead of Catchpoint enterprise
- Catchpoint Expert at $11,988/yr is the highest published tier, start there.
- Datadog RUM at enterprise scale.
- Dynatrace RUM at enterprise scale.
What we won't do
We do not fabricate dollar figures for quote-only vendors. Other comparison sites in this category routinely publish “starts around $X/month” estimates for quote-only RUM vendors based on third-party reports, leaked customer contracts, or analyst commentary. We don't. The risk of misleading a procurement team into committing budget against a fabricated rate is too high. We mark each quote-only vendor with a Quote Only badge, link to their contact page, and provide directional commentary (“likely in the $30K-$200K/yr range based on broader Akamai pricing patterns”) on the per-vendor page only.
Last verified June 2026