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Your first year with DPS

  • Latest Dynatrace
  • Explanation
  • 5-min read
  • Published May 26, 2026

The first year on a Dynatrace Platform Subscription (DPS) is when you set the habits that determine whether you spend confidently or reactively. This page is a recommended sequence for new customers — what to do, when, and which document to read for each step.

If you are not yet familiar with the DPS model, start with How pricing works and come back here.

Days 1–30: get oriented

Your first month is about visibility. You don't need to optimize anything yet — you need to see what's happening.

  • Validate your rate card. Compare what's in Capability billing details to your contract. Confirm every capability you bought is metered as you expect.
  • Confirm permissions. Make sure the people who need to see costs have either View account or View and manage account and billing information. See Account Management permissions.
  • Open Account Management. Walk through the Subscription overview, Cost & usage breakdown, and Billing report. The full tour is in Where to view your costs.

Days 30–60: attribute spend

Once you can see total consumption, the next step is attribution — knowing which team or product is driving each dollar.

  • Plan a cost allocation model. Pick by team, by product, or both. Start simple. Read Set up Cost Allocation.
  • Apply tags. Roll out dt.cost.costcenter (and optionally dt.cost.product) via OneAgent, Kubernetes, or telemetry enrichment.
  • Verify with the dashboard. Confirm allocation data is flowing. See Analyze Cost Allocation data.

Days 60–90: control and forecast

With visibility and attribution in place, you can put guardrails on.

  • Set budgets. Three default thresholds (75/90/100%) ship enabled. Add per-environment or per-capability budgets where appropriate. See Budget alerts.
  • Set cost monitors. Alert on threshold breaches, forecast deviations, and significant change. See Cost monitors.
  • Read the built-in forecast. Once you have 15 days of data, Account Management projects an end-of-period forecast. See Use the built-in forecast.

After 90 days: optimize and repeat

You now have the loop running. From here, the work is repeating it every quarter:

  • Investigate spikes as alerts fire — see Trace a cost spike to its root cause.
  • Optimize what you ingest, query, and retain — see Optimize.
  • Update your forecast with planned workload changes the built-in forecast can't see — see Forecast costs with run-rate projections.

Next: Manage your costs.

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