Tropic Pricing Guide - Should You Choose IT?

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Are you struggling to keep your organization's software spending in check? As businesses increasingly rely on SaaS applications to drive efficiency and productivity, it's no surprise that managing software expenses has become a daunting challenge.

With annual software spend often exceeding allocated budgets, finding a solution that provides visibility into your software ecosystem and helps you optimize your spending effectively is crucial.

This is where Tropic comes in—a SaaS spend management platform designed to tackle the challenges you're facing in optimizing SaaS spend. Whether it's the chaos of too many software applications or the need to balance your budget with operational efficiency, Tropic has you covered.

But here's the crucial question: is Tropic the right fit for your organization? To make an informed decision, you must delve into the nitty-gritty of Tropic's pricing strategy. In this article, we'll explore Tropic's pricing guide and show you how it can be the missing piece in your software management puzzle.

Tropic: What does it do?

Tropic is your all-in-one solution for efficient and cost-effective SaaS and spend management. With a strong focus on responsible spending, Tropic's unified platform offers modern businesses the visibility and control to eliminate redundancies and optimize spending.

It taps into a vast SaaS sourcing database to provide insights into pricing benchmarks and alternatives to enhance your negotiation process.  

Tropic automates approvals, freeing your team from the tedious manual approval and onboarding procedures. You can accelerate stakeholder approvals, streamlining the process while ensuring compliance and preventing delays and bottlenecks.

Tropic consolidates contract, usage, and spending data into a single platform, providing a complete view of vendors. Identify and act on savings opportunities quickly. It supercharges savings with one-click procurement services.

Features

Tropic’s platform features are split into four solutions:

1. Discover

• Sourcing Intelligence
• Pre-negotiated deals
• Intelligent Intake

2. Approve

• Workflows
• Collaboration
• Financial Controls
• Supplier Onboarding

3. Manage

• Supplier Management
• Accounting Automation
• SaaS management
• Budget Tracking

4. Save

• Spend Optimization
• Expert Advisory
• Assisted Purchasing

Tropic is an ideal solution for organizations looking to streamline their procurement processes. Assisted buying, expert advisory, approval workflows, pre-negotiated deals, etc. make Tropic a robust SaaS procurement solution.

However, the lack of deeper integrations can be a deal breaker for organizations looking to manage their entire SaaS app lifecycle, from app management, cost optimization, user onboarding, vendor management, and procurement.

Before we get to the nuances, let us look at how Tropic pricing works.

Tropic Pricing - Will it align with your immediate needs?

Despite being vocal about its features, Tropic is silent about its pricing plans. Two pricing tiers are available: Procurement Starter and Procurement Advanced, with no transparent pricing provided.

Furthermore, there are two available add-ons: Savings Machine and Procurement Services. The Starter and Advanced tiers offer basic features. If they want advanced features, they must purchase these add-ons.

Notably, the Starter tier only offers ERP integrations. While more prominent integrations like HRIS and SSO become accessible only with an upgrade to the Advanced tier.

This pricing structure may pose challenges for small and medium-sized organizations, as Tropic's pricing plan and features may not offer the best value for the cost. Other alternatives in the market offer more favorable options, with over 300 integrations included in their Starter plans.

However, a significant concern for SaaS buyers revolves around hidden pricing, which can have several implications:

• Hidden pricing necessitates contacting the sales team to obtain basic pricing information, causing delays in the decision-making process.
• Lack of pricing transparency makes it difficult for buyers to allocate the appropriate budget for purchase. This potentially leads to overspending or inadequate budgeting.
• Hidden pricing makes it harder to analyze competitive pricing.
• Buyers typically want to assess whether an application will yield a positive ROI. However, hidden pricing makes this analysis challenging.
• Hidden pricing may result in vendors billing extra fees for onboarding, updates, support, and upselling attempts, potentially leading to overspending.

If you’re flexible with how you spend on platforms, hidden pricing might not be a hassle. But for organizations with a limited budget, Tropic’s Starter plans will not offer the best bang for your buck.

Our thoughts

Despite having a decent stack of features, Tropic’s pricing plans can be a deal breaker for various organizations as they don’t offer the best value for the investment.

The Starter and Advanced pricing tiers offer basic features but don't cover much about SaaS management, spend management, or procurement. The only impressive features you get from the plans are vendor, contract, and request management.

In contrast, platforms such as CloudEagle offer even more advanced features within their Starter plans that cover SaaS and spend management.

Integrations

When compared to other platforms in the market, Tropic's integration capabilities are notably limited. What's even more concerning is that essential integrations like SSO and HRIS are not accessible in the Starter plan.

In contrast, some platforms offer a multitude of integrations within their basic pricing tiers. If your organization relies on a wide range of SaaS applications, Tropic may not be ideal for optimizing your entire SaaS lifecycle.

Add-ons

The only good takeaway from their pricing plans is their add-ons: Savings Machine and Procurement Services.

Savings Machine offers features like usage tracking, budget tracking, spend reports, and spend insights. However, due to its restricted integration capabilities, generating comprehensive and accurate data on usage and spending can be challenging.

Expert Advisory and Assisted Buying are impressive features. Combined with Tropic's approval workflows, pre-negotiated deals, and supplier sourcing database, it positions Tropic as a robust SaaS procurement platform.

However, it's important to note that Tropic focuses on procurement, unlike all-in-one solutions like CloudEagle, which comprehensively cover the entire SaaS lifecycle.

Pros and Cons of Tropic

Pros

• Approval workflows
• Pre-negotiated vendor deals
• Assisted purchasing
• Expert Advisory
• Pricing benchmarks
• Supplier sourcing database

Cons

• Limited integrations
• Lack of workflows for license reclamation, renewals, user onboarding, offboarding, etc.
• No app catalog
• Lack of proactive alerts for shadow IT
• Slackbot for procurement is not available
• Limited vendor research module
• Only provides high-level usage and spend insights due to limited integrations.
• Non-customer friendly pricing plans.

There you go. If your goal is to streamline your procurement process, then Tropic can be suitable. But suppose you have a non-lenient budget strategy and want to utilize it to purchase a comprehensive platform that fits all your needs. In that case, there are platforms like CloudEagle that offer more than Tropic without emptying your budget.

Why is CloudEagle superior to Tropic?

CloudEagle is a comprehensive SaaS app management, spend management, and procurement platform that can help organizations streamline the entire SaaS app lifecycle.

From app visibility, usage, and spend insights to cost optimization, renewals, procurement workflows, assisted buying, and automated user provisioning and deprovisioning, it encompasses all the essential features organizations require to maintain an optimized software stack.

In contrast to Tropic, CloudEagle isn't constrained when offering insights on usage, spending, vendors, transactions, and more. With an extensive library of over 300 integrations, CloudEagle can offer more profound insights, departmental spending perspectives, customized reports, benchmarks, and more.

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Features

Application Discovery and management

CloudEagle's comprehensive integration library enables the platform to connect with your internal systems and apps to provide a comprehensive view of your SaaS stack. Furthermore, besides its range of integrations, browser and desktop agents are available to ensure you have comprehensive visibility into all aspects of your SaaS applications.

The platform automatically identifies all active and inactive apps in your stack, effortlessly segregating SaaS from non-SaaS applications and centralizing them for easy access. Within the application module, you can conveniently view app usage, spending, contract data, license purchases, user provisioning to licenses, renewal dates, and more.

You can prevent shadow IT by configuring proactive alerts that notify administrators when new unsanctioned applications are detected within the system. With CloudEagle, you can safeguard your portfolio from third-party applications, proactively preventing the emergence of shadow IT and controlling SaaS sprawl, ultimately resulting in a highly optimized SaaS portfolio.

Cost Optimization

All unused, free apps and redundant applications will be identified automatically and displayed in individual dashboards. You can analyze the usage data and eliminate the applications to save on SaaS spend.

Deprovision users from unused licenses using workflows and reallocate those licenses to users who need them or right-size them during renewals. No manual work is needed; configure the license reclamation workflow and automate the process.

CloudEagle will analyze your stack and display duplicate applications used by various departments. You can connect with the user who purchased it, consider the team’s requirements, and decide whether to eliminate or consolidate the application using a comprehensive solution, resulting in SaaS savings.

Vendor research

Vendors are vital partners for your business success. Picking the right one can significantly impact how your company runs and how much money you spend. You no longer have to hunt for the perfect vendor on Google or other review sites; our platform has you covered.

You won't have to deal with technical jargon, long reports, or many reviews. Just tell us in plain words what challenges your business faces, and we'll give you a list of software options that fit your needs.

In today's fast-paced business world, staying updated is super important. Our platform helps you discover new software providers with the latest features and reviews. You can also connect with their existing customers to know more about the vendor.

CloudEagle makes it simple by showing you the most critical reviews and what's good and not so good about them. You can focus on the features that matter most to your industry and the size of your business based on what your peers think are essential.

Compare vendors side-by-side, speed up the process of buying software, and ensure it fits your business goals.

Renewal Management

Never miss your renewal again. CloudEagle will automatically extract renewal dates from your contract and create a renewal calendar. Based on the calendar, it’ll send renewal reminders via Slack and Email 30, 60, or 90 days before the renewal date.

Your team can use this time to analyze usage, compare competitive pricing, identify unused licenses, prepare a negotiation plan, and head to renewal negotiations confidently. No more hidden expenses due to auto-renewals.

Unlike Tropic’s basic renewal reminders, CloudEagle will escalate the process to various stakeholders, reminding them until someone acts on it. The reminder stops only after the contract is renewed.

Here’s a customer success story from Falkonry and how they automated renewals using CloudEagle.

Automated user provisioning and deprovisioning

Are you visiting each application to provision and deprovision users? In addition to license reclamation workflows, you can use CloudEagle’s auto-provisioning and deprovisioning workflows to grant and revoke user access or deprovision them from licenses.

Avoid causing delays for new employees by implementing automated provisioning workflows that recommend and configure the appropriate applications based on their roles and departments, ensuring a rapid onboarding process.

Likewise, when an employee departs, their access to applications can be automatically terminated with minimal manual intervention, allowing you to deprovision them with a single click and maintaining system security by preventing data breaches and unauthorized access.

Procurement workflows

Both Tropic and CloudEagle offer procurement workflows, but CloudEagle's standout feature is its versatility, as these workflows can be tailored for a wide range of purchases, encompassing software, hardware, and more. Unlike Tropic, which is primarily limited to SaaS purchases.

You can configure these workflows using customizable intake forms, with each workflow being triggered based on specific purchase requests. Furthermore, all relevant stakeholders will receive notifications through Slack, email, and in-app alerts.

Additionally, you can create a private Slack channel during workflow setup to facilitate seamless collaboration. This transparency throughout the procurement process enables users to monitor real-time progress, leading to accelerated processes and heightened accountability.

With this automation in place, your procurement team can shift their focus away from chasing approvals and instead concentrate on their core strategic tasks.

Assisted Buying

If your procurement team lacks time to handle negotiations, our SaaS buying experts can take over the process for you.

You can reach out to our experts for assistance and guidance in negotiations, whether you're handling new purchase requests or renewals. Our dedicated team of assisted buyers is consistently available to help streamline the negotiation process.

Our SaaS buyers will meticulously evaluate your needs, perform extensive market research and competitive analysis, leverage the latest pricing benchmarks, and provide invaluable insights for successful negotiations.

Whether to lead negotiations with our expert support or entrust our experts to handle the negotiation process fully is your choice.

Here's Lucas Dermois from ICEYE sharing the success story of how CloudEagle helped ICEYE save on SaaS spend, check it out:

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License management

CloudEagle will let you see each application's purchased licenses and usage. You can configure workflows based on usage limits, and if the usage is low, the user will be automatically deprovisioned and the license reclaimed.

You can then reallocate the licenses to other users in need or get our expert help to eliminate them by communicating with vendors, saving on spend.

App Catalog

CloudEagle has an extensive catalog of sanctioned applications for users to choose from. This will significantly help in preventing shadow IT and duplicate apps.

Slackbot for procurement

Users don’t have to visit the platform each time to raise a purchase request. Our procurement Slackbot will enable users to raise purchase requests from Slack, and the respective workflow will be triggered, alerting relevant stakeholders to collaborate and expedite the process.

Quick Rundown of why CloudEagle is better

• Deeper integrations
• Accurate and comprehensive usage and spending insights
• Advanced renewal, license reclamation, and provisioning workflows
• You can purchase any type of product (not limited to just SaaS like Tropic)
• AI-powered vendor recommendation engine
• SaaS application catalog
• Custom fields
• Fastest onboarding in the industry.

CloudEagle Pricing

CloudEagle stands out with its transparent pricing plans, a contrast to Tropic, and offers a more extensive feature set in its pricing tiers. Three pricing tiers are available: Starter, Growth, and Enterprise, each tailored to specific company sizes and requirements, ensuring you choose the one that suits your needs.

You can see the Starter plan has deeper integrations and crucial SaaS management and spend management features.

CloudEagle delivers a distinct advantage over Tropic by promising potential savings, which may vary based on your annual software spend, and you can find out your potential savings on our pricing page.

You'll unlock access to more advanced features as you progress through the pricing tiers. Our assisted buying services are not bundled into the plans but can be purchased individually, allowing you to select the platform, the service, or a combination that aligns with your preferences—it's entirely your choice.

CloudEagle commits to transparency by offering straightforward pricing, eliminating implementation fees, hidden charges, and specialized integration costs—all pricing information is readily available on our website.

Conclusion

Suppose you're seeking an all-in-one platform to effectively manage and optimize your entire SaaS lifecycle. Tropic might not be ideal as it focuses more on procurement services and lacks deeper integrations.

A holistic solution such as CloudEagle is essential for optimizing your complete SaaS lifecycle. It's worth noting that CloudEagle recently gained recognition on Forbes, TechCrunch, and Nasdaq for its impressive SaaS spend report in 2023.

CloudEagle is renowned for its exceptionally rapid onboarding process, a fact supported by Devin Murphy, a Senior Accounting Manager at RecRoom.

So, what do you think? If you're interested in a brief demonstration of CloudEagle to experience firsthand how it can transform your SaaS management, feel free to book a demo with our expert team.

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