Are you considering MadKudu as your choice of AI tool for predictive lead scoring? Confused about its pricing model? In this article, we’ll look at how to calculate the total cost of ownership of your predictive lead scoring tool  - and what you might end up spending with MadKudu.

What MadKudu offers

Founded in the mid-2010s, MadKudu is becoming a key player in the lead-scoring space. Their product suite includes:

1. MadKudu Lead Scoring for Sales: Identify the prospects that are most likely to buy.

2. MadKudu Lead Scoring for Marketing: Add predictive intelligence and proactive prioritization to your marketing campaigns.

3. MadKudu Lead Scoring for RevOps: Get a 360-degree view of all your prospects.

In recent years, MadKudu has rushed to add new features in an attempt to bring it in line with customers’ expectations for a predictive lead-scoring tool.

Understanding lead scoring pricing

Before delving into MadKudu’s pricing, it’s important to recognize that the total cost of a predictive lead-scoring tool encompasses more than just the platform costs.

A predictive lead scoring tool enables sales, marketing, and RevOps teams in your company to build a sales pipeline from your self-serve funnel. This means getting a 360-degree view of all your prospects which requires integrating with all your GTM data stack - product analytics, CRM data, billing data, and data warehouse.

Thus, when evaluating the true pricing of a lead scoring tool, you need to take into account numerous factors:

1) Platform Costs:

How a lead scoring tool bills for its base platform costs will differ between vendors. Components of platform costs may include:

• No. of signups

• No. of models

• No. of goals

• Separate costs for other add-ons enabling additional efficiency and functionality

2) Integration Costs:

Your data stack is the life behind the models run by any predictive lead scoring platform. To get a complete view of your leads, your entire data stack must be integrated into your lead scoring tool. You may incur additional costs in terms of building custom integrations with your existing GTM data stack which can significantly impact overall costs.

3) Implementation Costs:

How long does it take to implement the product into your daily workflows? Does the product support a DIY setup? Or does it require significant bandwidth from your internal Engineering Blog and data science teams? A tool with reasonable platform costs can become quite expensive if it eats up weeks or months of Engineering Blog hours before anyone in the company can use it. Consider whether the tool requires internal Engineering Blog and data science bandwidth for setup and ongoing operations or if it is user-friendly, and takes complete care by itself.

4) Training Costs:

How easy or difficult is the tool to use? How much time does it take to ramp up employees so they can make effective use of your predictive lead-scoring tool? Is using the lead scoring tool a significant learning curve for your employees? A difficult product to use increases costs in terms of additional resources spent on employees being onboarded onto the tool and lost employee productivity.

5) Ongoing Support and Maintenance Costs:

No lead scoring tool is entirely hassle-free. Eventually, your data science or Engineering Blog teams will need to assist with issues - and you’ll most likely need support from the vendor as well. It’s important to assess how much support will cost - and whether you’ll get the support from your vendor that you need. Continuous and dedicated vendor support and software updates are essential for the smooth operation of any predictive lead-scoring tool.

Out of the above, platform costs are mostly fixed and easiest to calculate. Implementation, training, and support can be more tricky. Research what other customers have experienced in these areas and map out some rough estimates before you make a purchase.

Basics of MadKudu pricing

So what does MadKudu's pricing look like?

MadKudu offers tiered pricing with three plans - Growth, Pro, and Enterprise. With transparent pricing for the Growth plan at $1999/month and the Pro plan at $3499/ month, the Enterprise plan however doesn't have transparent pricing. To get started with any plan, you need to talk to sales.

The Growth plan costs approximately $24,000 a year without any dedicated customer support and qualification of PQLs and MQAs. The plan does include:

• Real-Time Lead Scoring & Enrichment

• MadKudu Fastlane

• MadKudu For Web Chat

• All Integrations

• 2000 Leads Per Month

The Pro plan costs roughly $42,000 a year with only a Slack channel as part of customer support and doesn't contain scoring for MQAs or Ad Spend Optimization. This plan contains:

• All Features of the Growth Plan

• Product Qualified Leads (PQL)

• Smart Retargeting

• 6000 Leads Per Month

While the Enterprise plan pricing is gated and is based on custom needs, based on the Pro plan costs one can be sure of it to cost above a whopping $50,000 a year. This is the only plan with a dedicated customer success team and includes:

• All Features of the Pro Plan

• Website Personalization

• Ad Spend Optimization

• Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQA)

Challenges with the MadKudu pricing model

As we mentioned earlier, it’s best to consider feedback from current and previous users when evaluating a vendor’s lead scoring total cost of ownership. A look at user feedback on MadKudu’s pricing model and installation calls for a step back due to concern.

One unifying piece of feedback is the steep learning curve it is to implement the tool. Users remark how it takes significant education and bandwidth to get started with the tool. Far from being a DIY process, it requires the help of customer success managers who specialize in the product, an offering only available with the Enterprise plan of the product. Even then, according to several customers, it can be a little scary to deploy new models on their own. This adds to higher costs in support and implementation costs. All of these point to concerns about MadKudu’s true total cost of ownership.

Could using MadKudu put you behind the curve?

Predictive lead scoring should do more than just "lead scoring." Support for features like multi-entity segmentation, economic buyer identification, and behavioral signals powering the lead scoring is crucial for moving metrics in today’s fast-paced business world.

In this aspect, MadKudu has struggled to keep up. Several customers noted that signals and scores aren't aggregated at a domain level and rather are available only at a user level leading to reduced efficiency. A lack of self-training models as data or business changes also seems to be a key concern.

Others pointed out the lack of behavioral data and signals surfaced. Customers also reported usability concerns around load time and clunky reporting.

Companies can save significant money - and move the metrics they care about - with a reliable, efficient, and easy-to-use predictive lead scoring tool. Sadly in this regard, MadKudu appears to be showing its age.

We created Toplyne to make the promise of predictive lead scoring a reality. Toplyne supports a DIY setup and a product implementation that reduces ramp-up time and total cost of ownership with no use of internal Engineering Blog or data science bandwidth. Plus, we’ll help you put together a pricing package that delivers a solid return on your investment.