What EDI actually costs, with the numbers vendors publish
Four costs exist in every EDI bill: the platform, the per-partner fee, the transport, and the changes. Only the first two are usually quoted.
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The published benchmarks
These are the numbers a supplier can check today:
- SPS Commerce — analysis of its filings puts the average customer at roughly $14,350 a year; Vendr's buyer data puts the median contract near $18,900. Small suppliers report $300–$800/month plus per-partner fees.
- Orderful — $189/month per trading partner for Web EDI, $399/month for the integrated plan, with no setup or VAN fees published.
- TrueCommerce, DiCentral, Edict — quote-based, typically with an implementation fee and per-document or per-partner pricing.
- Managed services — a fixed monthly fee for someone else to own the work, usually $150–$500/month at small volume.
The four lines on the bill
Every quote should be read against these, not against the headline:
- Platform — the subscription. Fixed.
- Per partner — $19–$29/month at some vendors, $189/month at others. This is where a small supplier overpays for a big footprint.
- Transport — VAN or AS2. Sometimes bundled, sometimes metered by document.
- Change fees — mapping changes, new document types, spec updates. Rarely quoted, frequently billed.
What a small supplier should pay
If you have one to three trading partners, standard retail documents and no ERP integration, the honest range in 2026 is $150–$400 a month all-in, plus transport. Above that you are paying for enterprise features — multi-company hierarchies, analytics, managed onboarding for dozens of partners — that a small supplier does not use.
- Ask what a mapping change costs. If the answer is 'it depends', get a number in writing.
- Ask whether the per-partner fee applies to inbound-only partners.
- Ask what happens at renewal — most switches happen there because the price steps up.
The costs that are not on the invoice
Chargebacks, staff time and rejected shipments usually exceed the subscription:
- A single ASN mismatch can cost more than a year of platform fees.
- Someone has to watch 824s. If that is a $60k coordinator, the platform is the cheap part.
- Late onboarding can cost orders, not just fees.
Questions
Is EDI worth it for a small supplier?
If a customer mandates it, the question is not whether but which route. The cheapest route is usually the one with the fewest people touching it.
Why is SPS so much more expensive than Orderful?
Different products: SPS sells a managed network with retail relationships and onboarding; Orderful sells a self-serve platform where you do the mapping. Both are honest prices for what they include.
Can we just use the retailer's portal?
Sometimes for very low volume, and it usually stops being viable the moment order volume or document count grows.