Are you stuck paying the same subscription amount every month for your EDI solution, regardless of fluctuation in your usage volume? Even worse, is your provider's pricing model hard to understand and/or too rigid for the seasonal nature of your business?
At Better EDI, we believe EDI pricing is broken – but it doesn't have to be that way. Here's why it's critical to your business profitability to choose a provider with a transparent and scalable pricing model – and how Better EDI's pricing is different from the industry standard.
Why Most EDI Pricing Is Confusing
When EDI was first introduced in the 1960s and expanded in the 1970s, businesses had major concerns about the cost of data transfer – which was much higher in the days before everyone had broadband internet. So EDI transaction costs were directly related to the size of the documents being exchanged, measured in number of characters. The basis of pricing was the kilo-character (1000 characters), the size of a small purchase order. Today, businesses can pay anywhere from two cents all the way to 40 cents per kilo-character.
That pricing model might work for a business with a small volume of EDI transactions. But if you're a giant retailer sending huge documents with, for example, all the addresses of your nationwide retail locations, that cost can quickly put a huge dent in your budget. And if you're not well-versed in the technical aspects of EDI, you may not have a firm grasp on how big all of your purchase orders are. Or, you may have lots of different-size purchase orders making it difficult to estimate what your costs will be in any given month.
That challenge is why many providers don't provide pricing on their website – you have to talk to a sales representative who can gather your transaction information, crunch the numbers, and estimate cost for you.
Another potential cost to keep in mind is overage fees. Some providers still operate on antiquated long-distance phone service plans, resulting in added costs for going over their plan. This essentially penalizes you for growing your business.
Integration Costs
Some businesses with simple supply chain networks can use EDI as a stand-alone data exchange system. But in today's increasingly global network, you will likely find yourself having to exchange information between multiple software systems including WMS, CRM, and other third-party solutions. This can add to pricing confusion, because EDI providers add a fee for each integration – so if you have multiple trading partners with diverse systems, your costs can again add up.
While the cost of integrations isn't easily avoidable, reducing the opacity in how those integrations are priced shouldn't be so difficult.
Why Our EDI Pricing Model Is Different
At Better EDI, we think pricing should be a lot more simple and transparent. We also believe any EDI pricing model should allow you to scale your business easily, whether for overall growth or seasonality, without fear of skyrocketing overcharges.
Using our simple EDI pricing calculator, you can just enter your number of EDI transactions per year, the number of systems you need to integrate with, and the number of busy months you have in a year. The calculator will show you an estimated number of credits you'll need, along with your cost for the year – no confusion, no complicated math on your end.
How Our EDI Pricing Works
Better EDI has three pricing tiers: Basic, Professional, and Enterprise. Which tier you need depends on how many integrations you need with other systems, along with your estimated volume of transactions for the year. We don't lock you into a two- to three-year contract that may not fit your business as it grows.
From there, you can choose a credit bundle that corresponds to the number of transactions you'll perform in a year. One credit equals one EDI transaction. And while some providers consider each movement of a purchase order as two separate transactions (incoming and outgoing), Better EDI considers it a single purchase order – one document, one credit.
Need more credits mid-year? No problem – you can add more at any time, and all credits are good for a year from purchase. One final note: you won't pay extra for GS1 or UCC-128 labels. Labels are included in our EDI service.
How Better EDI Can Offer Transparent Pricing
The simple answer: we built Better EDI from the ground up without the bloat that plagues legacy providers. Because of our more efficient software model, we can offer much simpler pricing – so you can focus on building your business instead of figuring out how much your EDI expense will add up to this year.
EDI is mission-critical for your business, but that doesn't mean it has to be a blind money-hole thanks to impossible-to-understand pricing. Ready to see how Better EDI can simplify your EDI integration? Get in touch today.