Are you a distributed organization looking for a better way to connect to your employees, applications, and data across your locations? Are you looking for a more efficient way to transfer data safely?
You’ve probably been scanning the internet reading hundreds of articles on how to make these changes to your company. Finally, you’ve landed on your potential choice on how to solve these issues.
You are looking to invest in an SD-WAN solution but there's just one problem; you can’t figure out how much SD-WAN costs. One of the first things that buyers look for when deciding on a big purchase is the price.
As a telecommunications company here at Coeo, we have sold countless SD-WAN solutions and we know all of the components that go into the cost of SD-WAN.
In this article, you will learn about the pricing models of SD-WAN and what determines the overall cost of the solution.
What is SD-WAN?
SD-WAN or Software Defined Wide-Area-Network, is an overlay network that is built on top of underlying internet connections whether it be over fiber, LTE or broadband.
The solution is carrier agnostic and can be leveraged using any number of underlying internet providers.
SD-WAN is applied as a software network of SD-WAN appliances, connected by encrypted tunnels.
SD-WAN appliances continuously monitor the availability and performance of each network service. Data traffic is then classified based on application, ensuring data is sent out over the fastest, most reliable service.
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What is the cost of SD-WAN?
The typical cost of an SD-WAN product ranges anywhere from $150 to over $1,000 per month depending on the throughput and average consumption of data on the underlying internet connections.
That seems like a broad range of cost. There are a few main factors that influence the price which we will touch on next.
Factors influencing SD-WAN pricing
There are many components when determining the price of SD-WAN for your company. This is why the price range per month on SD-WAN is so spread out.
Here are the main components that factor into the price of SD-WAN:
Throughput consumption
This is the first component that goes into the price of SD-WAN. Understanding how much active bandwidth a company is consuming is the first step.
The maximum bandwidth would be taking the download speeds of each circuit that is in place and adding them up.
Equipment
The second piece is determining which piece of equipment needs to be deployed. The aggregate throughput of both the upload and download are added together to determine what piece of equipment an organization needs.
Offerings and add-ons
Most organizations have several versions of their SD-WAN offering and other add-ons that are offered. For example, here at Coeo, we have a standard advanced SD-WAN as well as a next-gen firewall and Universal Threat Management or UTM.
4 Components Influencing SD-WAN Prices at Coeo
There are 4 different components to an SD-WAN product here at Coeo. The 4 components will affect the price of the total product when it is all said and done. These 4 components include:
Standard SD-WAN
This is the meat and potatoes when it comes to the SD-WAN product. It is private connectivity, host optimization tools, and really everything that an organization thinks of when they think of SD-WAN.
Next-gen firewall
This is a security service that may be purchased on top of the regular SD-WAN product. A next-gen firewall is a web filtering security service ensuring that employees aren’t going on websites they should not be.
Universal Threat Management or UTM
A UTM is an add-on to the next-gen firewall and takes traditional anti-virus and puts it on the edge of the network locking down the network.
This will allow the network to look at the data traffic in real time and determine whether or not it is harmful to the network.
High Availability
High availability is actively running multiple instances of the SD-WAN solution on multiple devices. This ensures that in the case of a device failure, the environment will not experience an outage or impact the network performance.
Billing details
SD-WAN is typically a monthly recurring managed service. There is usually a licensing agreement in addition.
2 components influencing the billing of SD-WAN
Here at Coeo, there are usually two components that go into the billing of SD-WAN. These components will go into the billing when pricing out SD-WAN.
Licensing piece
The licensing piece includes the license size, anywhere from 25MB to over 1GB, as well as whatever additional services may be added such as the next-gen firewall or UTM services.
Equipment bill
The second component is the equipment which is also a recurring charge. Whichever piece of equipment is required would be deployed out as a 12, 24, or 36-month agreement.
If you would like to learn more about SD-WAN, check out the SD-WAN Buyer's Guide:
How does this help me decide to move forward with SD-WAN?
At this point in the article, you know the components that go into factoring in the cost of SD-WAN. Even though there are a lot of different factors that determine the cost of an SD-WAN network, you now have a good understanding of what those factors are.
Now that you know the cost of SD-WAN, it will help you in making your decision on closing a deal with a company that you trust.
Here at Coeo, we take pride in being transparent with our customers about all things telecommunications.
Here are some questions you can ask your company internally to help determine the exact cost of an SD-WAN connection:
• How much active bandwidth is my company using?
• Do I need additional security add-ons?
• Do any of my sites require high availability?
Your answer to these questions will allow you to help determine the cost of SD-WAN for your company.
After these questions are answered, it will make a sales appointment much easier with your potential suitor to determine the exact cost of your SD-WAN connection.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about the cost of SD-WAN or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment. 
Read these articles below to learn more about SD-WAN:
