Perforce Pricing Breakdown: Helix Core Hosting Plans on Assembla

Helix Core is the industry standard for game development, but the cost can be a drawback. Unlike Git or SVN, Helix Core is not open source and requires a license per user.

For studios of any size, we know keeping costs in check is critical. Luckily, as an official Perforce partner since 2012, we have plenty of experience optimizing infrastructure and reducing Perforce cloud costs without compromising performance.

In this article, we’ll break down the Perforce pricing on Assembla, explain the cost-saving benefits of our plans, and explore how our Managed Hosting works for studios looking for a customized, dedicated server.

How much does a Perforce license cost?

Perforce pricing is not disclosed on their website and the Perforce license cost is only available upon submitting a quote request. In general terms, the quote may vary according to the size of your team. We can only speak to Assembla’s Perforce pricing, which starts at $39 per user and already includes the Perforce license cost and standard support.

Other costs that add to your Perforce pricing

There are other costs you need to take into consideration when you use Perforce. Even if you get a Perforce license through their website, remember that Perforce pricing does not include hosting or advanced customer support. 

Therefore, you need to account for those expenses to get the full picture of the Perforce cost. The cost of Perforce hosting depends mostly on storage and egress, so the prices vary wildly according to your usage. Syncing large files, day after day, will quickly add to your cloud bill. 

That’s why it’s so important to know how to set up your infrastructure and choose a provider with specific Perforce expertise. At Assembla, our proven know-how allows us to reduce data egress, which brings down Perforce costs.

To paint a better picture, let’s break it down with a simple exercise.

Cloud Cost Comparison: Standard Setup vs. Assembla’s Optimized Hosting

Let’s say your team has 100 users and manages about 5TB of storage. In a typical cloud setup—AWS, for example—your data egress could reach 30TB. That comes around to $3,500 per month (December 2024).

Now, compare that to hosting Perforce with Assembla. With our smart configuration and optimization of P4Proxy, we can reduce egress to just 5TB, bringing your costs down to $950 per month. The bottom line? With Assembla, you save an impressive 70% on Perforce hosting.

If managing the setup yourself isn’t an option, you’ll need to hire or outsource the work. The challenge? Perforce experts are hard to find. Realistically, hiring in-house talent can cost your organization at least $100,000 per year—if not more. By leveraging Assembla’s DevOps engineers as an extension of your team, you not only streamline your Perforce infrastructure but also significantly reduce costs. That’s how Two Point Studios saves £30,000 a year with Assembla.

Now you see how you can reduce costs with Assembla – but what’s our actual Perforce pricing? How much can you expect to spend on hosting and the Perforce license? Let’s take a deeper dive into our Helix Core Add-on, as well as our Managed Hosting services.

Assembla’s Helix Core Add-on: What is it and how much does it cost?

Assembla’s Helix Core Add-on is a flexible turnkey solution to host your Perforce depots in the cloud. Setup is simple, and we handle all maintenance so your team can focus on development instead of infrastructure.

We call it an add-on because, first, you need to select your Assembla plan:

• Repos: with Repos, you get unlimited repositories and a single project management space.
• Spaces: with Spaces, you get unlimited project management spaces and one repository.
• Repos + Spaces: unlimited spaces and repos.

You can add Helix Core to any of our plans for just 39$ per user per month – the Perforce license is already included. Compared to standard Perforce pricing, our plans offer predictable monthly or yearly billing with built-in hosting, support, backups and optimizations. You also get unlimited users, 50GB or 250GB, depending on the plan, and our advanced Agile IT Project Management tool.

Beyond our predictable Perforce pricing, you also get:

Quick setup

Once you sign up to Assembla, you can start syncing right away without worrying about the initial setup. Since Helix Core Add-on is multi-tenant, this option features standard configurations. However, this is 100% the Helix Core version control system you already know, including the integrations with Unreal Engine and Unity. 

Perforce support 

Standard support from our team of Perforce DevOps experts is also included in our Perforce pricing, providing your team with 12×5 email and chat support. For a 20% upcharge, you can upgrade to Premium support, which includes 24×5 email, chat, and phone support, a dedicated Zendesk ticketing instance, screen sharing sessions, guaranteed SLAs, and a free three-month license to Travis CI.

Compliance with US and EU Regulations

Not only do you get world-class support and DevOps expertise with Assembla, you also get best-in-class security and data protection. We are SOC 2 Type 2 Certified and leverage top-tier data centers in the US and EU that are in compliance with their regulations. Our Perforce Helix Core Add-on also includes tools for running security scans on your source code to detect unencrypted passwords and access keys.

Collaboration tools

Built into our Perforce pricing are also tools to help with the day-to-day management of your projects. We support the Perforce P4 Command-Line Client, which enables admins and power users to quickly gain access to operations and exercise complete control over your Perforce instance. 

Plus, you can expect standard GUI support for every day tasks like commits, merge requests, code compare, and backups. We also provide our own all-in-one cloud-based project management and ticketing solution to help you streamline communication, tracking, and reporting.

Integrations

Alongside Perforce, Assembla also supports Git and Subversion repositories for teams that work across several version control systems, and we have integrations with industry-leading tools such as Slack, Jira, Unreal Engine, Unity, and more.

Assembla’s Managed Hosting: What is it and how much does our Perforce hosting cost?

Assembla’s Helix Core Add-on is a multi-tenant solution with standard configurations. With Assembla Managed Hosting, our DevOps teams become an extension of your in-house team, providing white glove monitoring and service. 

Our Managed Hosting is a Perforce hosting solution with dedicated single-tenant AWS hosting, custom infrastructure, and additional enterprise-level features. For example, if you want access to Perforce Helix DAM, Global Accelerator, replicas for distributed teams, or custom SSO, we’ll be happy to set it up.

Perforce pricing with Managed Hosting is available only upon request. Our team will take into consideration the number of users required, storage needs, support level, and additional customizations to prepare a quote. 

Apart from all the features we already mentioned for the Helix Core Add-on – compliance with US and EU regulations, collaboration tools, and integrations – our Managed Hosting also includes:

Custom infrastructure for Perforce hosting

A key benefit of hosting Perforce on our Managed Hosting solution is its customizability. Our team will work with you to design a custom infrastructure to support your business, including globally distributed AWS server setups and access to additional Perforce tools like Helix Swarm, Helix Admin, Helix DAM, and Helix Plan.

You’ll also have the following customizable features:

• Automated Perforce checkpoint backups
• Cloud-hosted proxy/replica in a different geographic region
• Helix Swarm, DAM, and Helix Plan Availability
• Custom backups and snapshots
• Git/Subversion to Perforce repository conversions

Optimizations for Perforce, like Global Accelerator and replicas

Because our Managed Hosting solution includes a single-tenant server, we are also able to offer more optimizations on this plan. Apart from reducing data egress, we can also improve your performance with the Amazon Global Accelerator and replicas.

Imagine, for example, a large project with thousands of files and 500GB of data. With Amazon Global Accelerator, we unlock optimal inter datacenter transmission speeds, reducing sync time by up to 80% in optimal circumstances.

At the same time, we can also create and maintain replica servers that mirror the data on your primary Perforce Helix Core server. These secondary servers improve performance, availability, and scalability, especially if your team is spread out in several countries and continents. 

For example, if you have a team in Tokyo and another in London, synching 10GB from a central server might take as much as 30 minutes. However, with a replica server in each location, it can take less than 5 minutes. 

Learn how Unity used Assembla to reduce latency for its multi-zone team and transfer files 3 times faster.

Periodic Cloud Cost Management

Managing cloud expenses can be challenging, but we make it easier. Our team performs regular cloud cost analyses to help you identify inefficiencies, optimize resource usage, and reduce unnecessary spending. Since we don’t profit from the money you pay to AWS, it’s in our best interest to help you cut excess costs and maximize your budget—ensuring you get the best value without compromising performance.

Already have a Perforce license? Bring it to Assembla (BYOL)

If you already have your Perforce license, you can still use Assembla’s Managed Hosting plan. Assembla is a Perforce authorized service partner, so our team can set up and manage the cloud infrastructure on your behalf. With BYOL (Bring Your Own License), you can keep your Perforce pricing plan and still enjoy Assembla’s optimizations to cut down costs. 

Breakdown: Perforce Pricing and Hosting Solutions with Assembla

Sign up for a Perforce Free Trial

To find out more about how your team can benefit from Perforce Helix Core hosted by Assembla, start a free 14 day trial of the Helix Core Add-on (and the Spaces+Repos plan).

Want to outsource Perforce management? Request a Quote

If your organization has custom requirements, our fully customizable single-tenant solution may just be what you need. Request your custom Perforce pricing quote today.

_{Original article written by Allison Bokone, edited on 01/31/2025 by Claudia Fernandes.}