Brand protection pricing: the six ways vendors charge, with worked examples

What are the pricing models for brand protection?

There are six: per trademark, per marketplace, per product watched, per notice, per legal task or hour, and flat plans that cap removals. Most vendors mix two. Red Points charges per trademark and per marketplace on top of a plan fee; IP Moat charges by marketplace count with a removal cap.

Enterprise vendors sit outside the table. Corsearch and BrandShield don't publish prices, and Red Points' Starter, Professional and Enterprise plans say Request Pricing on its pricing page, which describes them as flat-fee with unlimited detections and takedowns. Our guides to Corsearch alternatives and BrandShield alternatives cover what each sells.

How does per-trademark pricing work?

You pay for each trademark the vendor enforces. On Red Points' self-serve calculator, one trademark is $174 a month, two $305, three $392, four $522 and five $653, always on top of a $938 plan fee and the marketplace prices.

The extra cost per mark isn't steady: the second adds $131, the third $87, the fourth and fifth about $130 each. The model suits a brand whose copies use its name or logo. It fits less well when copies use only your photos, because photos are protected by copyright, which starts with whoever took them under 17 U.S.C. 201, not with a registration.

Watch the plan fee. On a one-trademark scope it's most of the bill: $938 of the $1,397 for Amazon. So the number of trademarks moves the total less than the line items suggest. Our Red Points alternatives guide prices seven real scopes.

How does per-marketplace pricing work?

You pay for each marketplace watched. Red Points charges from $15 a month for a single-site marketplace like Etsy to $285 for Amazon's 19 country sites, or $820 for all. IP Moat charges $105 for one marketplace, $280 for six and $529 for 30 plus websites.

It's cheap while your copies stay put. If a seller you removed on one marketplace turns up on another, the new site is a new line on the bill. Check two things before you sign: whether a marketplace means one domain or a family of country sites, and whether a bundle beats your picks. On Red Points, Amazon, eBay and AliExpress already total $765, against $820 for every marketplace on its list.

Each marketplace also has its own reporting route, which matters if you'll file yourself. The Takedown Routes Index lists them with the date each was checked.

How do per-product and flat plans work?

Per-product plans charge by how many products are watched, with every covered platform included. Flat plans charge one price: Brand Protector is $199 a month for 16 monitored surfaces. IP Moat goes the other way, with unlimited products but a cap of 40 or 200 removals a month.

A new marketplace doesn't add to a per-product bill, which is why the unit matters more than the headline. Pick the pricing unit before the vendor: per-notice pricing suits a few copies a year, per-product pricing suits hero products copied in many places, and per-marketplace pricing suits copies that stay put. Then ask which platforms are searched today, not on the roadmap.

Flat plans are the easiest to budget. Caps are the part to read: at full use, IP Moat's $105 plan works out to about $2.63 per removal, and Premium's $529 for 200 to about $2.65. Ask every vendor what happens in the month you go over.

How does per-notice pricing work?

You pay for each takedown notice. DMCA.com's managed Standard notices cost $199 each for 1 to 9, $179 for 10 to 25 and $165 for 26 to 50, with a case worker and case manager. Its DIY toolkit is $10 a month or $100 a year, and you do the research and sending.

Per-notice is the cheapest model for a few copies and the steepest for a flood. Five managed notices cost $995. Seven at $199 come to $1,393, about what Red Points charges for one trademark on Amazon with no cap on takedowns. Twenty at $179 cost $3,580.

DMCA.com pitches its takedowns at stolen content on the web, and offers a money-back guarantee on qualifying Standard takedowns. Check it handles the marketplaces where your copies sit before you compare it with a marketplace tool.

What about hourly and fixed-fee legal work?

Lawyers charge by the task or the hour. Firms in Amazon's IP Accelerator cap a US trademark filing at $700 plus government fees, a high-level search at $650 and a comprehensive review at $1,800. Hourly rates for IP lawyers weren't published on any page we checked, so ask for an estimate in writing.

Government and dispute fees come on top. The USPTO's base application fee is $350 per class on its fee schedule. A UDRP complaint against a lookalike domain is $1,500 at WIPO for 1 to 5 domains with a single panelist, before any lawyer's fee.

Legal work is a one-off cost, not a subscription. It's the right model for the jobs software can't do: filings, contested counter-notices, letters and lawsuits.

What does each model cost for the same brand?

For one brand with copies on Etsy and Alibaba.com, published prices run from $99 a month on per-product software to $1,142 for managed filing on Red Points. Move the same brand's copies to Amazon and the managed price is $1,397; spread them everywhere and it's $1,932.

Brand Protector's flat $199 a month would sit in every row. IP Moat's and Brand Protector's app pages don't list which marketplaces they search, so confirm coverage before you compare. And compare like with like: the managed columns include someone filing for you, the others include your time.

Price a bad month too. If copies triple the week a product goes viral, per-notice bills rise and capped plans run out, while flat, per-product and unlimited plans don't move. Whether paying at all makes sense is a separate question, covered in is brand protection software worth it. For every published price in one place, see what brand protection costs.