Ask an EDI provider "what does it cost?" and you'll get a demo invitation. Here's the actual answer, in numbers, including ours.
The traditional EDI bill, itemized
A typical mid-market EDI setup with a legacy provider stacks four charges:
1. The platform subscription. $100 to $1,000+ per month depending on tier, payable whether you trade one document or none. It usually gates features too — advanced maps, more users, API access.
2. Per-partner fees. $50–$150 per trading partner per month. Add Walmart, Target, and two distributors and you've bought a car payment before shipping a carton.
3. Mapping and setup fees. $500–$5,000 per document type per partner to build the maps, plus onboarding project fees. A supplier setting up the standard chain — 850, 855, 856, 810 — with three retailers can be quoted five figures before the first order flows.
4. VAN kilocharacter charges. The oldest tax in EDI: value-added networks bill per 1,000 characters transmitted. The perverse part is what it punishes — the 856 ASN, the most compliance-critical document in retail, is also the most verbose. Carton-level detail means character count, and character count means cost. Suppliers have literally been advised to "keep ASNs short" — advice that walks straight into chargebacks.
Total it up: a three-partner, moderate-volume supplier commonly pays $500–$1,500 monthly plus a four-figure setup year one — before a single document's marginal cost.
The per-document alternative
EDISQ prices EDI like a utility meters water: pay for what flows.
- 0–25 documents/month: free. Forever, no card. A supplier testing the waters or trading with one small partner pays nothing.
- Then $0.50 per document, stepping down as volume grows — $0.40, $0.30, $0.20, and $0.10 past roughly 500,000/month.
- Marginal-tier billing, like tax brackets: crossing a threshold discounts the next documents, never re-prices the earlier ones.
And the list of things that cost zero, because they're the product rather than add-ons: certified maps, AS2/SFTP connectivity, VAN interconnects where partners require them, unlimited sandbox testing, every feature at every volume. Going live takes the Production plan: a $100/month minimum applied in full as document credit — your invoice is the greater of usage and the minimum — with the first live trading partner included and each additional live partner a flat $50/month. One document = one inbound or outbound business document, whatever its character count. The 400-carton ASN and the 3-line PO cost the same.
Run your own numbers
The math is simple enough to do in your head:
- A small supplier trading ~200 documents/month: 25 free, 175 × $0.50 = $87.50 of usage — under the Production minimum, so the invoice is $100/month. Versus $500+ on a legacy stack.
- A growing brand at 2,000 documents/month: 25 free, 500 × $0.50 + 1,475 × $0.40 = $840/month — and adding a retailer adds $50/month, not a mapping project.
- Genuinely tiny volume — a purchase order and invoice a week — stays inside the free 25 while you build and test on Self-Serve, and runs live at just the $100 Production minimum, which is the point: EDI compliance shouldn't gatekeep small suppliers out of retail.
The structural difference matters more than any single number: per-document pricing scales with your business, in both directions. Slow season, small bill. No penalty for the verbose documents retailers demand, and the Production minimum is never shelf-ware — every dollar of it applies to documents.
That's the entire pricing model. It fits in a blog post — which is, we'd argue, how you know it's the right one. Full ladder and an estimator on the pricing page.
FAQ
What does EDI cost with a traditional provider?
Typically $200–$1,000+ per month before volume: platform subscription, per-partner fees ($50–$150 each), one-time mapping fees ($500–$5,000 per document type), plus VAN kilocharacter charges. Setup projects commonly run four figures.
What is kilocharacter pricing?
VANs historically bill per 1,000 characters transmitted. Your cost scales with document verbosity — a long ASN costs more to send than a short PO — which makes bills unpredictable and punishes exactly the documents retailers require.
What does EDISQ charge?
Per document: first 25 each month free, then $0.50 per document, stepping down to $0.10 at the highest volume tier. Marginal-tier billing like tax brackets. No mapping fees, no setup fees. Going live takes the Production plan — a $100/month minimum applied in full to document usage, first live trading partner included, $50/month per additional live partner.
Is one EDI document one bill line?
Yes. One inbound or outbound business document — an 850, an 856, an 810 — is one document, whatever its size. A 400-carton ASN counts the same as a 3-line PO.