{"source":"https://netify.co.uk/insights/how-to-compare-sase-pricing-between-vendors/","title":"How to Compare SASE Pricing Between Vendors for Global Enterprise Networks (2026)","author":"Harry Yelland","published":"2026-07-17","licence":"Reuse permitted with attribution to Netify (netify.co.uk).","mcp":{"endpoint":"https://netify.co.uk/api/mcp/","tool":"get_sase_pricing_comparison_framework"},"ten_commercial_questions":["What is explicitly included in the base licence, by name, not by category.","What is explicitly excluded, and what it would cost to add.","How renewal pricing is calculated, and whether year one pricing is discounted against it.","What implementation and migration work is included versus billed separately.","What support tier is quoted, and what a higher tier would cost.","How pricing changes as user numbers, sites, or bandwidth grow.","Whether hardware is included, leased, or purchased separately.","Whether the managed service covers policy changes and incident response, or monitoring alone.","Whether training is included, and for how many staff.","What commercial assumptions the quote is built on, such as contract length, minimum commitments, and currency."],"pricing_models":["Per-user pricing is the most predictable and the easiest to budget for, but it scales directly with headcount and can end up penalising fast-growing organisations more than they'd expect.","Per-site pricing suits organisations with a stable branch count reasonably well, but it can undercharge for large sites and overcharge for small ones at the same time.","Bandwidth-based pricing tracks actual usage, which rewards efficient networks, though it creates real budget risk during traffic spikes, cloud migrations, or seasonal peaks.","Feature-based or tiered pricing bundles capabilities into packages, which looks transparent enough on paper but often locks functions like DLP or CASB behind a higher tier than the headline quote actually implies.","Fully managed service pricing folds the platform and its operation into a single fee, which simplifies budgeting considerably but makes it harder to isolate what you're actually paying for the software versus what you're paying for the labour behind it."],"hidden_costs":["Professional services for design,","Configuration and go-live support","Premium or 24-hour support,","Migration and phasing out of legacy systems/architecture","Log retention beyond a vendor's default window,","Regulatory compliance capabilities","Integration work with identity providers, SIEM, and endpoint tools","Hardware for branch or edge connectivity,","Annual price uplifts built into the renewal"],"tco_components":["The year-one platform cost,","Ongoing subscription and renewal costs,","Internal staffing time to administer the platform,","Support costs above the included tier,","Costs tied to user or site growth,","Any migration or coexistence costs incurred during rollout."],"red_flags":["Discounts that apply only in year one, with no visibility into the renewal price sitting behind them,","Exclusions buried in footnotes rather than stated plainly in the summary,","Renewal terms that aren't specified at all,","Implementation quoted as a rough estimate rather than a fixed scope","Support described in generic terms without any stated response time or coverage window attached."],"weighted_scoring_method":[{"category":"Commercial","weight":0.3,"detail":"Total cost, renewal terms and contract flexibility."},{"category":"Support","weight":0.2,"detail":"Coverage hours, response times and escalation paths."},{"category":"Functionality","weight":0.2,"detail":"Which features are within the included scope that your organisation will actually use (not just breadth of generic features)"},{"category":"Scalability","weight":0.15,"detail":"How cost and capability change as the organisation grows"},{"category":"Implementation","weight":0.1,"detail":"Migration approach, timeline and resourcing"},{"category":"Risk","weight":0.05,"detail":"Vendor stability, roadmap and contractual protections."}],"tables":{"quote_covers":{"caption":"What the quote covers","columns":["What the quote covers","Often bundled into the headline price","Often priced separately"],"rows":[["Licensing model","Base platform access","Add-on modules, higher tiers"],["Managed service","Monitoring only","Day-to-day policy management"],["SD-WAN","-","Native or third-party SD-WAN"],["Implementation","Basic setup","Migration, coexistence, training"],["Support","Standard business hours","24-hour, regional, premium tiers"],["Hardware","-","Edge appliances, replacement"],["Regional coverage","Home-region processing","Additional country/region licensing"]]},"pricing_matrix":{"caption":"Enterprise pricing comparison matrix","columns":["Category","What \"included\" should mean","Common exclusion to check for","Why it matters"],"rows":[["Licensing","All core security and networking functions","Higher-tier modules (DLP, CASB, RBI)","Determines real functional scope"],["Support","24-hour, multi-region coverage","Premium response times, named engineers","Affects operational resilience"],["Managed service","Policy changes and incident response","Monitoring and alerting only","Determines who actually runs the platform"],["Implementation","Full migration and coexistence","Basic configuration only","Drives year-one cost and timeline"],["Renewals","Fixed or capped uplift","Uncapped annual increases","Determines long-term TCO"],["Scalability","Published growth pricing","Custom re-negotiation at scale","Affects cost predictability as you grow"]]}}}