How free prices and the 'contention pool' on SharePrice work

We're often asked why live prices sometimes aren't available or how we are able to offer live prices for 'free'. As our website and mobile apps grow more popular it is important to understand our business model and what that means in terms of free user access to the contended live price server pool.

The model is best described by a diagram. In the example below our live price contended pool is set to '5' (in reality it's far higher than this), but you get the idea. The 6th person trying to access will only be able to if the longest user in the connected pool has had a 'reasonable amount of time' to review his market position. In short, if we're busy, then maintaining a live connection for free for an extended period of time will be unlikely.

Bearing in mind our investment in to development, hosting, data and LSE licensing - you will understand why we have to rely on advertising across both the site and mobile apps to offer you this service. We respect usability, we never serve pop ups, our original vision to deliver the page and data fast holds true. Advertising is a necessity, as is maintaining the contention pool at a sensible limit. It's a balance of revenues in versus overall costs and licensing costs out.

Our SharePrice Pro service is also outlined on the right hand side of the diagram. It's a simple business proposition: value the service enough to subscribe and we'll offer an enhanced service that includes no 'kicks' from the streaming server, the Level 2 order book, RNS alerts and no ads.