The Cost of EDI

The biggest question in EDI is always: What does it cost?

Of course there is no one answer, it depends on who you're dealing with. Are you dealing with a VAN, an integrator, or doing it in-house? Costs vary wildly, and paying more doesn't guarantee you a better system.

The definition of VANs is "Value Added Network". The term comes from before the internet was available, and VANs provided a way to get your EDI document to and from your business partner. Before the internet, VANs were indispensable for doing EDI. Today, in the world of low-cost internet, the basic reason to use a VAN is gone. Anyone can send a file from one company to another. Of course, EDI should be sent securely to protect the data contained in it, but with the modern internet that's easy to do. 

 Yeah, for some companies it's not a problem, but for most small companies paying a VAN is out of the question, it's just too expensive. Fortunately, there are many newer integrators to deal with now, unfortunately their prices are usually lower, but not that much lower.

 The cost of VAN's and integrators force most small companies to roll their own EDI systems. While this is lower cost, most small companies don't know enough about EDI to make good decisions on who to hire to get a robust, scalable EDI systems, and they end up with a mishmash of EDI components and no comprehensive system that "just works".

We are not making the claim that our EDI Magic programs and components are the only logical choice, the best choice or the least inexpensive choice if you don't use a VAN or integrator. However, we can't estimate the cost of an open source solution as it depends almost entirely on who you hire to do it for you. We can estimate the costs for EDI Magic though.

We deal with either the Logistics industry or the medical (HIPAA) industry quite often so here's an estimate for a scenario for both of these.