Optimizely SaaS core launches: Reasons to invest

SaaS Core, the latest way to use Optimizely's market-leading cloud CMS, is finally out of beta and ready for prime time (and as a bonus, so is the new Visual Builder). SaaS Core is a fully managed service from Optimizely where you only need to manage the website front-end, whereas the CMS formerly simply known as Optimizely CMS and now known as Optimizely PaaS Core, allows you to manage the full Optimizely application.

There's already been a lot of discussion of technical and process reasons for making the choice between SaaS Core and PaaS Core. If you've missed it, here's a 3 bullet summary:

• Choose SaaS Core for rapid provisioning with low development effort
• Choose PaaS Core for sites with complex functionality and server-to-server integrations
• Choose either for headless, just make sure you pick Optimizely Graph rather than Search and Navigation for headless (or hybrid headless, or hyper-personalisation, or Generative AI interfaces) on PaaS Core; Graph is fundamental to SaaS Core so you don't need to worry about it there

But licencing cost is another valid reason for making the choice, and given the differences in cost structure between the two, there are even valid cases for mixing and matching between the products.

PaaS Core is primarily costed based on traffic volume. There are some volume nuances in extreme scenarios for number of sites, and for the size of search index, but those are secondary. However, because SaaS Core doesn't directly handle the end user traffic, traffic volume isn't a pricing factor (but remember you still need hosting for your front end, like Optimizely's recommended partner Vercel). Instead, costs are calculated on number of CMS users and number of content items. 

That means that high traffic sites without hundreds of CMS users or tens of thousands of content items can be cheaper to run via SaaS Core. Whereas sites with huge content libraries and large numbers of content contributors but tens rather than hundreds of millions of page visits can be cheaper to run via PaaS Core. And given the the Graph interface and content management APIs now in both SaaS and PaaS Core, there's even the potential to bring down costs for complex digital portfolios by mixing the two models and cross-publishing content. 

Optimizely's costs will also vary by scenario, so we can't provide specific illustrations here, but if you'd like to know more about how to optimize your Optimizely setup across PaaS and SaaS Core taking all factors into account, then please get in touch - we'd love to help.