Four CDP vendors sold in five months; 1 of 5 prints a plan price
What happened to the CDP vendors between December 2024 and May 2025, and what five CDP and activation pricing pages print, as of September 2026.
Four customer-data vendors changed hands in five months: ActionIQ, Lytics and mParticle went to larger customer-management companies between December 2024 and January 2025, and Census, a reverse-ETL tool that pushes warehouse data into marketing and sales apps, went to Fivetran in May 2025.1 2 The question the 2023 version of this piece asked was whether to buy a packaged customer data platform or assemble one around your own data warehouse. The deals give a sharper answer: the composable idea won the architecture argument, and the standalone vendors that sold it were folded into bigger platforms.
01Packaged or composable: where the customer profile lives
A packaged CDP collects events from your website, app and CRM, stitches them into one profile per customer, and stores that profile in the vendor’s own database, from which it sends audiences to email, ads and support tools. A composable CDP keeps the profile in a warehouse you already pay for and adds only the collection and activation pieces. The trade is control against assembly: composable avoids paying twice to store the same customer, but somebody on your side has to model the data.
02The independents were bought in five months
Four customer-data vendors were absorbed by bigger platforms between December 2024 and May 2025
Acquisitions of CDP and data-activation vendors, by month announced, December 2024 to May 2025
Table view
| Date | Event | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 2024 | ActionIQ to Uniphore | Bought by Uniphore, a conversational-AI company. |
| Jan 2025 | Lytics to Contentstack | Bought by Contentstack, a content-management vendor. |
| Jan 2025 | mParticle to Rokt | Rokt invested US$300 million to take control; now sold as Rokt mParticle. |
| May 2025 | Census to Fivetran | Fivetran agreed to acquire the reverse-ETL tool; terms not disclosed. |
Source: MarTech, 16 January 2025 and 2 May 2025 · as of 2 May 2025
The buyer list is the argument. A data-pipeline company bought the activation layer because activation is a feature of moving data, and three companies selling to marketing and customer teams bought profiles to feed their own products. For a buyer, the vendor you shortlist may now be a module of a larger suite with its own roadmap.
03Four meters, one printed plan price
We read the pricing pages of five CDP and activation products. Twilio Segment bills on monthly tracked users and asks you to contact sales for every plan.3 RudderStack is free to 250,000 events a month and prints a Growth plan at US$265 a month for one million events.4 Hightouch sells its Composable CDP on usage with “no MTU limits” and prints no price; its free tier is two active syncs.5 Fivetran bills the former Census product on monthly active rows, gives 3,500 free, and prints worked examples, such as US$202.25 for 12,007 rows synced to Salesforce, rather than a rate card.6 Rokt’s mParticle page prints no price at all.7
04Buying in India
All five price in US dollars; through a reseller the invoice is in rupees with 18% GST added. The regulation that bites is the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: a CDP is where consent and purpose have to travel with every profile. The DPDP Rules were notified on 13 November 2025, with the Consent Manager provisions from 13 November 2026 and the substantive duties from 13 May 2027.8 9 A composable design helps here only if the warehouse region and the deletion path are yours to set; check both before the first sync. TechBag’s HubSpot Data Hub page covers the CRM-side alternative.
Sources
- MarTech, CDP consolidation continues, as Rokt scoops up mParticle — 16 January 2025 Updated 22 January 2025.
- MarTech, More consolidation among data tools, as Fivetran acquires Census — 2 May 2025
- Twilio, Segment customer data pricing — vendor pricing page, undated
- RudderStack, pricing — vendor pricing page, undated
- Hightouch, pricing — vendor pricing page, undated
- Fivetran, pricing (Activations) — vendor pricing page, undated
- Rokt, Rokt mParticle platform — vendor page, undated
- DPDP Rules 2025, commencement timeline — notified 13 November 2025
- Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — 11 August 2023
Disclosure. TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view.
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