Pricing built for the work.
Not for your top line.
Three things set your tier: how many systems need to talk to each other, how many brands you run, and how custom your schema is. Two POS and one ERP? You’re Focused. Five brands under one parent? You’re Federated.
Choose your complexity.
Every tier is the full platform. You move up when your stack gets harder to run.
- 1 brand, 1–2 source systems
- Standard retail schema
- Up to 10 locations
- 5 named users, unlimited queries
- Email & Slack notifications
- Shared-tenancy cloud
- Standard support, business hours
- 1 brand, 3–5 source systems
- Custom fields & KPIs
- Up to 30 locations
- 15 named users, unlimited queries
- Push notifications (Ward mobile)
- Premium connectors (SAP, NetSuite, major POS)
- Priority support, 4-hour response
- 1–2 brands, 5+ source systems
- Multi-channel (retail, DTC, wholesale, marketplaces)
- Custom schema, dedicated infrastructure
- 40 named users, full API access
- Private VPC, SOC 1 included
- Dedicated CSM, quarterly business reviews
- 24/5 support, 1-hour response
- Multiple brands / legal entities
- Cross-entity benchmarking
- Multi-region data residency
- Unlimited users, full API
- SOC 2 Type II underway
- Dedicated solutions architect + CSM
- 24/7 support, 30-minute response
What determines your tier.
Revenue is a lazy proxy. The work is what we price on.
A $20M group on three POS systems is harder to run than an $80M single-brand DTC. Four dimensions decide where you land.
POS, ERP, WMS, e-commerce, loyalty, marketing, finance. More systems, more reconciliation work.
One brand, a portfolio, or separate legal entities. Each entity needs its own schema, auth, and compliance boundary.
Off-the-shelf, or custom fields and industry logic: fresh weights, seasonality, pharmacy compliance, royalties.
Shared tenancy or private VPC. Basic SLA, or SOC 1, SOC 2, and data residency.
Stack what you need.
Already have Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, or Redshift? Ward connects on top and picks the best LLM per query. No rebuild.
| Tier | Scope | One-time connect | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focused Orch | Single warehouse, 5 users, 3 query domains | $5K | $12K/yr |
| Connected Orch | Multi-source orchestration, 15 users, custom prompts | $12K | $36K/yr |
| Networked Orch | Multi-LLM evaluation, agentic workflows, 40 users | $25K | $72K/yr |
| Federated Orch | LLM fine-tuning, private VPC, SOC 1/2, cross-entity | $50K+ | $144K+/yr |
Detect-and-act automations. Insights route to a named human, approval flows, cross-system writes to ERP, POS, Slack, and email.
| Tier | Scope | Add-on to Ward | Standalone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focused | 5 workflows, 50K tasks/mo | $6K/yr | $18K/yr |
| Connected | 15 workflows, 250K tasks/mo, premium connectors | $18K/yr | $42K/yr |
| Networked | Unlimited workflows, 2M+ tasks/mo, agent orchestration | $48K/yr | $84K/yr |
| Federated | Dedicated infra, custom connectors, cross-entity, 24/7 SLA | $96K+/yr | $150K+/yr |
Fractional AI strategy. LLM evaluation, model selection, retrieval architecture, agent design, build-vs-buy.
| Engagement | Scope | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Workshop | 2-day onsite, AI readiness audit, roadmap deliverable | $12K–$20K one-time |
| Assessment | 4–6 week build-vs-buy deep dive, written recommendation | $25K–$45K project |
| Retainer | Monthly strategy, vendor review, board prep, team enablement | $3K–$8K/mo (6-mo min) |
What you’re choosing between.
The four options every mid-market retailer actually weighs.
| Spreadsheets / DIY | Tableau + analyst | ThoughtSpot Enterprise | Palantir Foundry | Ward Connected | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | $0 visible | $30K tools + $140K analyst = $170K | $400K–$1M+ | $500K–$5M+ | $60K |
| Setup time | None (you build forever) | 3–6 months | 4–6 months | 6–12 months | 6 weeks |
| AI reasoning layer | None | None | Bolted-on, query-capped | Yes (you engineer it) | Native, multi-LLM |
| Retail-native schema | No | No | No | No (you build it) | Yes, out of box |
| Agentic workflows | No | No | Limited | Yes (engineered) | Yes, ready day 1 |
| Designed for mid-market | n/a | Sort of | No (Fortune 1000) | No (Fortune 100) | Yes |
| Hidden cost | 1–3% of revenue in avoidable stockouts, markdowns, overstaffing | Analyst burnout, dashboards no one uses | $50K–$200K data modeling consultants | 20–50% Y1 services uplift | None |
- Annual cost
- $60K
- Setup time
- 6 weeks
- AI reasoning layer
- Native, multi-LLM
- Retail-native schema
- Yes, out of box
- Agentic workflows
- Yes, ready day 1
- Designed for mid-market
- Yes
- Hidden cost
- None
- Annual cost
- $0 visible
- Setup time
- None (you build forever)
- AI reasoning layer
- None
- Retail-native schema
- No
- Agentic workflows
- No
- Designed for mid-market
- n/a
- Hidden cost
- 1–3% of revenue in avoidable stockouts, markdowns, overstaffing
- Annual cost
- $170K (tools + analyst)
- Setup time
- 3–6 months
- AI reasoning layer
- None
- Retail-native schema
- No
- Agentic workflows
- No
- Designed for mid-market
- Sort of
- Hidden cost
- Analyst burnout, dashboards no one uses
- Annual cost
- $400K–$1M+
- Setup time
- 4–6 months
- AI reasoning layer
- Bolted-on, query-capped
- Retail-native schema
- No
- Agentic workflows
- Limited
- Designed for mid-market
- No (Fortune 1000)
- Hidden cost
- $50K–$200K data modeling consultants
- Annual cost
- $500K–$5M+
- Setup time
- 6–12 months
- AI reasoning layer
- Yes (you engineer it)
- Retail-native schema
- No (you build it)
- Agentic workflows
- Yes (engineered)
- Designed for mid-market
- No (Fortune 100)
- Hidden cost
- 20–50% Y1 services uplift
Spreadsheets look free and cost the most. Missed insights and drift between stores are the largest single expense in mid-market retail.
You’re not paying for software. You’re paying for the insights you can’t afford to miss.
Connected runs $60K a year. Here is what one missed insight costs the same retailer.
What you catch
| You catch | First-week impact | Annualized |
|---|---|---|
| One stockout day at one store | $500–$5,000 | $20K–$200K |
| One mispriced promo run | $20K–$80K | $80K–$320K |
| One quarter of staffing inefficiency | $7K–$20K | $30K–$90K |
| One vendor fill-rate dispute | $15K–$50K | $60K–$200K |
| One Category 7 markdown spiral | $30K–$100K | $120K–$400K |
Sources: NRF, IHL Group, RetailNext benchmarks for mid-market multi-location operators.
| Investment | Cost |
|---|---|
| Annual Ward subscription | $60,000 |
| One-time setup | $18,000 |
| Workflow automation add-on | $18,000 |
| Total Year 1 | $96,000 |
| Return | Value |
|---|---|
| Stockout reduction (1.5% recovery on $40M) | $600K |
| Margin optimization (40 bps) | $160K |
| Labor / scheduling efficiency (2%) | $144K |
| Year 1 return (mid-case) | $904K |
The first stockout Ward catches pays for the quarter. The first promo conflict pays for the year.
Everything after that is margin you were not going to capture.
Common questions.
Four dimensions: source systems, brands and entities, schema, infra and compliance. Most mid-market retailers land in Focused or Connected. Answer within 24 hours of a 30-minute call.
Yes. Upgrades are clean and pro-rated, with no penalty for moving up six months in.
Source integration, schema and KPI setup, provisioning, two training sessions, 30 days of guided onboarding. Networked and Federated add private VPC and a security review.
Per-user pricing punishes you for using the platform. Ward prices on stack complexity, so every team member is included.
Both are general-purpose platforms where you build the retail layer yourself. Ward ships retail-native schema, retail KPIs, and an agent that already understands stockouts, fill rates, promo conflicts, and shrink.
Tell us about your stack.
We score your complexity, quote your tier, and show you the platform. 30 minutes, no decks.
Or take the contracts first: open the document room for the MSA, DPA and security questionnaire, no call required.
Control AI spend by department and user.
Without skimping on the outcome.
Give every department and every user a compute budget. Ward routes each question to the cheapest model that clears the quality bar, so finance caps the spend without capping what the business gets back.
Find out what your data has been hiding.
Tell us about your operation. We’ll show you the problems Ward catches, and the ones your current tools miss.