Pricing
Pricing: pay for what the system does, pence per stage, per part.
SmartFactory is priced on use. As a part moves through the stages you have chosen to run in the system — moulded, inspected, labelled, booked in — that work costs pence. Unlimited users, energy included, and no seat licences to count.
It is a run rate, not a capital project with a go-live date. Start on one cell and the cost starts small because the use is small. A quiet fortnight costs less than a busy one, and the cost follows your production rather than leading it.
Two different numbers, never mixed. Your production cost per part — energy, material and labour — is a feature of the product: what a part costs you to make. Our pence-per-stage price is what you pay for SmartFactory. The product never sums them, and neither do we.
Modules
Buy the part of it you need today.
SmartFactory is modular. Four packages, each one a complete product on its own, each one a superset of the reason you started looking. Nothing is re-implemented when you move up — the modules you already have keep their history and their numbers.
Quality
Inspections, right-first-time analytics, SPC and capability, and the label designer with full traceability.
For a business whose pressure is coming from its customers’ audits.
Monitoring
Machine states and OEE from real cycle data, energy and your production cost per part, role dashboards, andon boards and alerts.
For a business that wants to know what the floor is actually doing.
MES
Adds works orders, the process designer, scheduling and tool changes, operator stations and maintenance.
For running the work, not just watching it.
Full
Adds stock and traceability and the staff portal. Everything SmartFactory does, on one set of numbers.
For the factory that wants one system end to end.
Every tier: unlimited users, the open API and webhooks, and a trial that starts on a fully simulated factory. A tier decides which modules are switched on; the pence-per-stage pricing then applies within it. Tell us which modules matter and we’ll talk you through the rates the same day.
How usage pricing behaves
A billing model that follows the same rules as everything else here.
Usage pricing earns a reputation for surprises. The way you avoid that is not a promise — it is how the thing is built. These are the rules the product enforces on us.
- The rate card is always visible to you, inside the product. Not on request, not in an appendix to a contract — on screen, in SmartFactory, whenever you want to look.
- Parts made and parts scrapped are never billed. Producing more does not cost you more per part, and a bad shift is not a charge. They exist in the model only as the denominator of the per-part figure.
- An issued statement can never change afterwards. Once a month is issued it is fixed. There is no path in the system that restates a period you have already seen.
- Pricing never blocks production. If anything in the commercial layer fails, the factory keeps running and the presses keep counting. Nothing on your shop floor waits on our billing.
- Monthly usage statements export as CSV, Excel and PDF — with identical totals. The three files agree, so whichever one your finance team opens is the one the conversation is about.
Price it yourself
The arithmetic is simple. Do it on the demo factory.
A stage is one thing the system does to a part: moulded, inspected, labelled, booked in. A part that passes through four stages is four stage-events, each priced in pence on the rate card. Forty thousand parts a month through four stages is 160,000 stage-events — multiply by the rates and that is the bill. There is no minimum, no platform fee and no per-seat line to add on top.
We could print a specimen table here, but a table cannot know how many stages your process has. Your trial tenant can: the rate card sits on screen inside the product, and the simulated factory runs a realistic floor you can map your own parts onto. Take your volumes, take the rates, and have your number before you have spoken to a salesperson — then send us the arithmetic and we will confirm it in writing.
Three steps to your number
- Count your stages. Walk one part through your process: how many times does the system record something being done to it?
- Read the rate card. It is in your trial tenant, on screen, the same card every customer sees.
- Multiply by a real month. Parts × stages × rate. A quiet month costs less because the use is less.
The principles
The rules this pricing follows.
You pay for what the system does
Pence per stage of production, per part. A quiet week costs less than a busy one, and nothing is charged for a module you are not using.
The rate card is in the product
Every rate is on screen inside SmartFactory, at all times, to you. You should never have to ring us to find out what something costs.
Making parts is never the charge
Parts made and parts scrapped are never billed. They exist only as the denominator — the thing the per-part figure is divided by.
Unlimited users, always
Operators, quality, planners, directors — everyone gets access. We will never charge per seat.
Energy monitoring included
Live and historic energy per machine is part of the platform, not a line item.
Open API on every plan
Your data is yours. REST API and webhooks on every plan, documented and supported.
No proprietary hardware
Off-the-shelf smart meters and relays at hardware cost. No vendor-locked I/O units to buy or replace.
Intelligence as an option
The SmartFactory Intelligence AI tier is an add-on — pay for it only if you want to ask your factory questions.
Funding
Made Smarter can fund up to half of it.
Eligible manufacturers in nine English regions can access match-funded grants of up to £20,000 (around 50%) for digital adoption projects — production monitoring included. Made Smarter is impartial and UK government-backed, and your regional programme decides which projects it funds.
Questions we always get