How do you work with us?
Customers subscribe to one of three market subscriptions: Supporter, Sponsor, and Patron. Where you fit depends both on what your specific requirements are, as well as how complex and difficult you are to service.
- Supporters:
Only smaller companies (a judgement call on our part, but look at the Clients page for examples) are eligible for this arrangement, but it’s very simple. A 12 month subscription is available via a generic contract - available for download here (PDF warning) - for $5,000. Everyone at this level is charged the same fee, so there are no tiresome negotiations. - Sponsors:
Sponsors are typically either smaller companies who are more committed to RedMonk or larger companies who require a more limited subscription. The minimum fee for a Sponsor level agreement is $10,000.00; for clients with greater needs, the fee increases. - Patrons:
Patrons are our most committed customers, as well as the largest consumers of our resources. Prices vary for Patron level subscriptions depending on the exact nature of the requirements, hours, and so on.
What Do We Do?
We generally work with firms on a retained or subscription basis. Subscriptions include some combination of the following services:
- Consulting Hours:
The staple of all of our contracts, these hours are employed by customers for a variety of needs. Examples of recent projects include an open source advisory session, a conference speaking engagement, a strategic product roadmap consultation, leading an open source license risk/reward discussion, and a marketing critique and feedback session.
We’re fairly versatile, although we do not do coding or development. If you’re unsure as to whether or not we can help, just ask: we’ll be able to tell you pretty easily, and if we can’t be of assistance we can probably tell you who can. - Research and Publishing:
Clients are entitled to neither special access or special coverage within our public research, as we are dedicated to providing only open source, non-commissioned research. We do believe, however, that these policies offer substantial benefits to our clients, including:- Simplified access for your employees: no need to bother with seats, or a new username and password combination - the research is there for the taking.
- Simplified access for your own customers: you may not repurpose our research for commercial (i.e. marketing, etc) materials without an agreement (see below), but you may link to it as you see fit.
- Highly ranked and visible research: because our research is public, much of it has been discussed and linked to. This approach rewards RedMonk analysts with higher than usual search engine rankings, meaning that our research is likely to surface in the Top 10 or Top 5 for a variety of queries your customers and prospects are likely to make.
- Community based analysis: because our research is public, you may benefit from the additional insights of those who comment directly or link to further discussions.
- New audiences: content that is access controlled is, by definition, only available to those with access. That excludes important communities and individuals, who may not learn of your product because they lack access to the content behind a pay wall. Our research, on the other hand, is available to all and thus has reach into communities that paid research does not. Other firms would have you pay them simply for the privilege of reading their research, and then pay them again for the right to have the public read it. We think you should pay us if and when you think our work has value from a commercial perspective.
- Press Services:
All of our customers are entitled to two important press services. First, they may ask for quotes to support outgoing press releases, and second they may provide our names to media as analysts that have been briefed on the subject matter. No guarantee is made that the quotes will be positive in nature, of course, but we will provide quotes and prioritize inbound media inquiries.It’s important to note that we will certainly comment on non-client inquiries as well, but we restrict the ability to provide our names to the press to paying clients, simply because it takes time to service media requests.
- Networking Assistance:
Given the breadth of our research duties, our analysts have the opportunity to form solid, ongoing relationships with a variety of individuals from the smallest open source project up to the largest vendor. Where it’s appropriate, and we believe there’s a mutual fit, we’ll leverage these relationships on behalf of clients. Think of this as a very specialized form of the LinkedIn network, where an analyst is actively helping to identify connections you may not have considered. - Proactive Alerts:
One of our more popular services, we act as the early warning systems for many of our clients. Given that we track hundreds of incoming data sources, and have an extensive network of contacts across a variety of communities, we’re often made aware of potential issues, problems or competitive threats before you are - and we’ll use that on your behalf. Once the issue has been surfaced and identified, we can also act to broker conversations between you and the third party if desired. - Discounted Content Pricing:
As described above, our content is free for all non-commercial usage (i.e. for usage in marketing materials on your website, you’d have to contact us for licensing). Nor do we accept commissioned work of any kind. If, however, you’d like to purchase content after it’s been published, say to support marketing activities, you’re eligible to do so at fixed and discounted rates.
If there are services that you require that are not covered by the above, feel free to ask. Chances are we’re grouping it in one of the above buckets.