Open-source customer data platforms: Can you unleash your data for less?

Open-source customer data platforms can revolutionize your data management, empower your marketers and provide unparalleled flexibility and control for less money in licensing costs. But is open source the right route for your marketing organization to take?

Let’s begin with customer data platforms. CDPs help businesses gather their first-party data from disparate systems and use it to build unique profiles of individual customers. This type of unified customer database allows businesses to create personalized experiences and infuse their marketing with offers and discounts specific to audience members or segments.

Like many software categories, there are open-source CDPs and proprietary CDPs, as well as some shades in between, where open-source components and projects are included in proprietary applications.

What is an open-source CDP?

Open-source software is released by a community or organization with a license that allows users to view, modify and distribute the source code freely. That means it can be modified and customized by users who need additional features and functionality. Those modifications and customizations are often made available to the entire community associated with the open-source project.

Compare this open-source arrangement to proprietary software, where the code behind the product is the intellectual property of the organization that develops it. Any modifications or customizations will come from the developers of the software, or from a software development kit (SDK) created by the vendor.

Using proprietary software usually involves a more costly licensing fee, though some products offer limited functionality or seats on a free or low-cost basis.

The most well-known open source software projects include the Apache Web Server and the Linux operating system. Some companies have built a business around providing support for open-source projects, such as Red Hat, which created and supported a popular version of Linux and was eventually acquired by IBM.

There are also proprietary software vendors that contribute to and use open-source projects in their software. These vendors do not license their entire codebase under an open-source license, but they contribute to projects that are used as components of their software. CDP vendor Treasure Data, for example, lists its contributions to a number of open-source projects on its website.

An open-source customer data platform is a CDP that was developed as an open-source software project with a code base that is available for modification and customization.

In the CDP market, there are also vendors like Rudderstack and Snowplow, both of which offer both open-source tools and versions with more powerful features and functionality built on top of open source.

Exploring the advantages of open-source CDPs

Like other open-source software project, open-source CDPs carry a number of advantages, including:

Cost savings. Open-source software eliminates costly licensing fees, which keeps the initial costs low. When you buy open-source software through a vendor, it’s largely the support you’re paying for.

Flexibility and customization. Access to the source code means businesses deploying an open-source CDP can modify it to suit their specific requirements.

Active Community. Developers who contribute to the project help with support and troubleshooting.

Security. Available source code means that anyone can identify vulnerabilities and address them.

Reliability and Stability. An active community of developers leads to continuous testing and improvements for the project.

Interoperability. Unlike proprietary software, where vendors will be most interested in tying together their own tools, the open nature of open-source lacks favorites, making for easier integrations.

Rapid Innovation. New features and modules created by the community are made available more quickly than most proprietary software vendors.

Overcoming challenges in implementing open-source CDPs

When you license and deploy proprietary software, the vendor often has teams of customer success and professional services experts ready to help you with training, integrations and everything else you need to make the deployment successful.

Open-source software usually relies on a community of users who help build and support the software. Community support can be valuable — thus it’s listed as an advantage above — but it’s not quite the same as direct support from a vendor that is getting paid to service its customers.

Open-source projects also require developers to handle the deployment and integration, not to mention any modifications. Many martech tools are chosen and deployed by marketing professionals with some help from internal IT resources or vendor support.

Open-source CDPs, on the other hand, will require software development and IT resources, so a good working relationship with those teams will likely be a requirement for any organization looking to deploy an open-source CDP.

The evolution of customer data platforms

Beyond a central database of customer data, CDPs differentiate themselves in a number of ways. (You can read more about CDPs in general on MarTech’s Customer Data Platform page.)

The CDP Institute divides the CDP market by “types” of CDPs:

• Data.
• Analytics.
• Campaign.
• Delivery.

More than anything, these specializations represent the legacy of CDP vendors’ origins. Some Data CDPs began as tag management or web analytics providers, leveraging the data they gathered to expand into linking data to customer identities, assembling unified customer profiles and storing them. Meanwhile, Campaign CDPs, according to the CDP Institute, “provide data assembly, analytics and customer treatments,” which are closer to one-to-one addressability than segments. They also offer campaign orchestration across channels.

The CDP market also includes “composable” CDPs. The term “composable” in this context suggests that the CDP is built with a modular and flexible architecture, allowing organizations to easily customize and integrate it with other software components within their existing infrastructure.

Dig deeper: Making sense of composable CDPs: What martech buyers need to know

Key features and functionality of open-source CDPs

Whether you’re exploring open-source or proprietary CDPs, the features and functionality will depend on your requirements.

Integrations are a critical part of every CDP deployment because customer data platforms collect data from sources and deliver it to various destinations, such as other tools in your martech stack.

Integrations with popular applications like Salesforce, for example, are common. And a number of technologies and protocols exist to make it easy for systems to exchange data. Home-grown, custom solutions could prove more challenging. Make sure the solutions you explore can make the connections you need to execute on your strategy.

Dig deeper: Breaking down data silos: A practical guide to integrated marketing data

As the CDP market continues to evolve, functionality is expected to expand. As this happens, expect the lines to blur between CDPs and other tools and platforms. This is already happening, even in the open-source market. Pimcore, for example, offers an open-source CDP, but it also bills itself as a broader digital experience platform (DXP).

While some applications will expand into platforms that bring together different functions, other vendors and open-source projects will continue to develop tools that are purpose built for specific use cases and requirements. Tracardi, for example, is an open-source CDP that specializes in unifying data for e-commerce businesses with a focus on enhancing customer loyalty.

Security is an obvious requirement for any application that handles customer data given the costly consequences of a data breach. Anytime your data leaves your environment it’s exposed to risk in transit or on another platform. Rudderstack has an open-source CDP that it calls “warehouse native,” which means it works within your existing data warehouse and doesn’t remove your data from your environment.

Dig deeper: Customer data debt: The hidden obstacle to CDP success

The future of the open-source CDP market

The evolution of the CDP space is not yet complete. There are undoubtedly new features and integrations that will be needed in the future to help marketers create meaningful experiences and powerful connections with customers and prospects.

The pace of innovation in the open source community will help it fill the gaps as features and functionality evolve.

It’s a good bet that the near-term evolution of the CDP space will be impacted by the following trends:

The rush to capitalize on first-party data. With Google’s imminent deprecation of third-party cookies, marketers are looking to leverage their own data instead of relying on other sources.

Customer expectations. Customers still crave experiences over sales pitches and still find value in personalized outreach and offers that are targeted to their interests.

The continued data explosion. There remains an enormous amount of data being generated and collected by online and offline consumer behavior.

Data and privacy regulations. How customer data is collected and used in a near-constant state of flux because of a lack of global regulation.

Dig deeper: 3 points to consider before implementing a CDP

Will an open-source CDP unleash your data for less?

The last thing you want to hear when you ask a clear yes or no question like this is often the most common response: It depends.

Open-source CDPs will come at a lower initial price point than proprietary software. But before your organization jumps at the most appealing price tag, you need to clearly understand what you get for the price.

Start with your requirements. Every software purchase comes with a discussion of “must-have” and “nice-to-have” features and functionality. Open source is no different.

Then think about your resources. Do you have the know-how and resources to deploy and support an open-source CDP? What about training the users?

If you can meet your requirements for features, functionality and integrations and you have the resources to deploy, support and use the open-source CDP, then it might be the right choice for your organization. You will likely save money and be in a position to take advantage of the interoperability and innovation that comes from deploying open-source tools.