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The margin steps propose a target price. Guardrails are the limits that price has to respect before Elastly shows it to you. The steps decide where to aim; the guardrails decide the number you actually get. Every recommendation records which guardrail had the final say, so a held price is never a mystery.

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The guardrails

Eight limits can shape a final price. All of them are live. Price floor, price ceiling, and MAP can come straight from your source as floorCents, ceilingCents, and mapCents, so a product can carry its own limits in. See Field mapping.

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How they combine

Guardrails do not fight each other. They collapse into one floor and one ceiling, and the strictest always wins.
Floor is the highest of MAP, price floor, competitor band low, and minimum margin. Ceiling is the lowest of price ceiling, competitor band high, and maximum margin. The price moves in the allowed range between them.

Every floor rule collapses to the highest; every ceiling rule to the lowest. The price is free to move between them.

When two limits land on exactly the same number, Elastly names the more specific one as the reason. MAP is named first, then price floor, then competitor distance, then minimum margin. If MAP and your margin floor both put the floor at $12.00, the recommendation says MAP held it, because that is the one you would want to know about.

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The order they are applied

1

Clamp to the floor, then the ceiling

The target price is pulled inside the effective floor and ceiling.
2

Clamp to the last-price band

The price is pulled inside the range allowed by what this customer last paid.
3

Round

The number is tidied to your rounding style.
4

Check everything again

The band, the ceiling, and the floor are all re-applied, in that order.
The floor gets the last word, on purpose. Rounding runs before the final checks, so a rounding step can never push a price under your floor or over your ceiling. Anything rounding moves out of bounds is pulled straight back in.

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Max change per cycle

This is the guardrail people misread most, so it is worth being precise. It does not band the last price. It bands the last margin, then applies that band to today’s cost. If your cost moved, the price is allowed to move with it rather than being frozen to an old number. How wide the band is depends on how stale the price is and how much your cost has moved: So a price sold yesterday at an unchanged cost barely moves. A price last sold a year ago, on a cost that has jumped, is allowed to catch up. The bottom of the band is never allowed below your minimum margin.

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Rounding

Two styles, and you pick one:
Snap every result to .99, .95, or a whole unit. Best where customers see the price.
Round to sensible steps that grow with the price. The default ladder rounds to the nearest 5c under 10,thenearest25cunder10, the nearest 25c under 100, the nearest 1under1 under 1,000, and the nearest $5 above that. A good fit for B2B pricing, where charm endings look out of place.

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Where they live

Your guardrails are set once in the Control Center and apply everywhere. New workspaces start with sensible defaults rather than an empty, unguarded state, so you are protected from day one. Strategies inherit them. A strategy can tighten the margin floor, the margin ceiling, rounding, and the max change for its own products. It can never loosen any of them, and it cannot touch the other guardrails at all. See Pricing strategies.
Never a mystery. Every recommendation carries the guardrail that held it back, if one did, along with the full list of limits that were checked. A held price always explains itself. See Explainability.