PRICING — TENTATIVE RANGES

    What a Migration or Archival Project Typically Costs

    Most vendors make you sit through two calls before anyone says a number. These are tentative planning ranges for engagements of each shape, what moves them, and what is included — so you can budget before you talk to us. Every engagement is quoted as a fixed fee against an agreed scope, not billed by the hour.

    Fixed fee
    Per agreed scope
    Days
    To scope, not months
    40–60%
    Below consultant-led
    2 yrs
    Hosting often included

    Read these as ranges, not quotes

    Every figure on this page is a tentative planning range, not a quoted price and not the commercial terms of any customer engagement. They are here to help you budget and to sanity-check other quotes. Your number depends on your source system, how much history you keep, how clean the data is and how many reports you need — and it is confirmed only after a short discovery. We would rather give you a real range now than a precise-sounding number that changes later.

    Three shapes of engagement

    Nearly every project we run is one of these three, or an explicit combination of the first two.

    Archive & retire

    Legacy Archive

    Retire one legacy system, keep the history searchable.

    from around $25,000
    one-off, fixed fee
    Typical scope
    • One source system
    • Up to ~10 years of history
    • Hundreds to low thousands of employees, patients or records
    • A standard report set plus an Employee/Record 360° view
    Includes
    • Extraction, transformation and load into the archive
    • Reconciliation evidence and sign-off pack
    • Search, drill-down and export
    • Role-based access and audit logging
    • UAT support and decommission readiness
    • Hosting and support, commonly 2 years
    Migrate
    MOST COMMON

    Platform Migration

    Move core data from a legacy platform onto a modern ERP or HCM.

    around $40k – $90k
    one-off, fixed fee
    Typical scope
    • One source system to one target
    • Core objects — master data, balances, transactions
    • Several test cycles before cutover
    • Statutory and compliance fields treated as critical path
    Includes
    • Source profiling and data-quality assessment
    • Source-to-target mapping and crosswalks
    • Automated transformation into the target's load format
    • Iterative test loads and defect resolution
    • Full reconciliation and control totals
    • Cutover support
    Programme

    Enterprise Programme

    Multi-phase, multi-module migration with accuracy gates.

    from around $150,000
    phased, fixed fee per phase
    Typical scope
    • Multiple modules or multiple source systems
    • Phased delivery across roughly 4–8 months
    • Accuracy-gated phases, each signed off before the next
    • Attachments and documents alongside structured data
    Includes
    • Everything in Platform Migration, per phase
    • Dedicated solution architect and programme management
    • Full-scale rehearsal loads
    • Payroll, timecard or financial control-total reconciliation
    • Production cutover and hypercare

    Currency is USD. Figures exclude applicable taxes and any third-party fees your incumbent vendor charges to release your own data.

    Archive plus migration — priced as one, not two

    The most cost-effective pattern we see is a hybrid: migrate only the balances and transactions your new system actually operates on, and keep the full history in an archive alongside it. It keeps the migration small and the retention complete.

    When you do both, we do not quote the sum of the two. A large share of the work — extraction, profiling, mapping and reconciliation — is shared between the archive and the migration, so a bundled hybrid lands well below adding the two bands together. Ask for it as a single scope.

    Complete retention
    Full history preserved independently of both the retired source and the new platform.
    Smaller migration
    Less mapping, less reconciliation, shorter timeline, lower risk at cutover.
    The old system goes
    Historical access no longer depends on the legacy licence, so it can actually be cancelled.

    Ongoing hosting and support

    Archives are long-lived, so they carry a running cost after go-live. On most archival engagements an initial hosting and support term — commonly two years — is included in the fixed fee, with annual renewal after that.

    Archive sizeIndicative annual renewalWhat it covers
    Small — single system, low volumefrom ~$2,400 / yearSecure cloud hosting, encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access, backup and recovery, business-hours support, platform maintenance and updates.
    Mid — multi-module or larger historyscales with volumeAs above, with larger storage and additional user populations.
    Enterprise — multiple systems retiredquoted on scopeAs above, plus named support arrangements and extended retention management across systems.

    Compare that against what you are paying today to keep a legacy application licensed purely so somebody can occasionally read an old record. For most organisations the archive renewal is a fraction of the licence it replaces — which is usually where the business case comes from.

    What moves the number

    Cost is driven by scope and complexity, not by hours billed. These are the levers, in roughly the order they matter.

    DriverTowards the lower endTowards the higher end
    Source systemsOne system, one instanceSeveral systems or instances to consolidate
    Extraction routeDocumented API or database accessVendor-gated exports, undocumented schema, no support
    History retainedA few years, structured data onlyA decade or more, plus documents and attachments
    Data qualityClean, consistent identifiersDuplicates, orphans, inconsistent codes, manual cleansing
    ReportingThe standard report setMany bespoke legacy reports rebuilt
    Reconciliation depthRecord counts and category totalsFinancial and payroll control totals, document counts
    Compliance regimeStandard retentionHIPAA, GDPR, SOX or statutory payroll evidence
    AttachmentsNone or fewScanned documents, pay statements, W-2s, clinical notes

    More detail on this: what drives Oracle Fusion migration cost and the migration cost calculator.

    Always included

    • Discovery and source-data assessment
    • A written scope and data inventory before build starts
    • Extraction, transformation and load
    • Source-to-target reconciliation with evidence you can hand an auditor
    • Exception tracking and resolution within the agreed scope
    • UAT support and business sign-off
    • Role-based access and audit logging
    • Export to Excel, CSV or PDF
    • Handover documentation and a run book

    Usually extra

    • Fees your incumbent vendor charges to release your data
    • Licences and infrastructure for the target platform
    • Implementation or configuration of the target system itself
    • Data cleansing that needs extensive manual business review
    • Bespoke reports beyond the agreed set
    • Additional history beyond the agreed retention window
    • Applicable taxes

    How we price and how you pay

    Fixed fee against a written scope

    We quote a fixed fee for an agreed scope rather than an open-ended day rate. If the scope changes, the change is priced and agreed — you are never watching a meter run.

    Scoped in days

    A short discovery — source system, history, volumes, reporting and retention needs — is enough to convert a range on this page into a firm number.

    Payment tied to milestones

    A typical schedule is 30% at kickoff, 30% when the build is ready for your validation, 20% after you approve the data, and 20% at go-live. You pay as value lands, not up front.

    Phased on larger programmes

    Enterprise programmes are priced per phase, each with its own accuracy gate and sign-off, so you can stop or re-scope between phases rather than committing to everything on day one.

    What engagements like these typically cost

    Illustrative engagement shapes, to show how the drivers above play out. These are tentative planning figures for engagements of this type — not quoted prices, and not the commercial terms of any particular customer.

    Clinical archive

    A small outpatient practice retiring a legacy EHR — around 1,200 patients, seven years of history, read-only archive with a full report set and two years of hosting and support included.

    around $25k – $30k
    Payroll archive

    Around 200 employees and ten years of payroll history, including pay statements and W-2 documents, with search, an Employee 360° view and thirteen standard reports.

    around $28k – $35k
    Payroll migration to a new ERP

    The same payroll estate, but migrating the operationally required balances and transactions into a new ERP with full reconciliation, rather than archiving only.

    around $40k – $55k
    Enterprise HCM & payroll programme

    A four-phase, accuracy-gated migration for a large employer across roughly six months — full-scale loads, payroll and timecard reconciliation, attachment migration and hypercare through cutover.

    around $150k – $200k

    See the delivery detail behind engagements like these in our case studies.

    Pricing questions

    Are these prices or estimates?+

    Estimates — tentative planning ranges, not quoted prices and not the commercial terms of any customer engagement. They are here to help you budget and to compare other quotes against, but your fixed fee is set after a short discovery that confirms source system, volumes, history, reporting and retention.

    Why fixed fee rather than time and materials?+

    Because the risk in a data migration belongs with the people who understand the data, not with you. A fixed fee against a written scope means overruns caused by the work being harder than expected are ours, not yours. Scope changes are priced and agreed separately.

    What if I need both a migration and an archive?+

    Ask for it as one scope. Extraction, profiling, mapping and reconciliation are largely shared between the two, so a bundled hybrid costs materially less than adding the two bands together — and it is usually the better architecture anyway, because it keeps the migration small and the retention complete.

    What are the ongoing costs after go-live?+

    Migrations have none — once the data is in your new platform, the engagement ends. Archives carry annual hosting and support, from around $2,400 a year for a small single-system archive and scaling with volume. On most archival engagements an initial term, commonly two years, is included in the fixed fee.

    What is most likely to push my cost up?+

    In practice, three things: a source vendor that makes extraction difficult or charges to release your data; attachments and documents at volume, such as scanned records, pay statements or W-2s; and a long list of bespoke legacy reports that must be rebuilt rather than retired. We triage reports during discovery precisely to keep that last one down.

    Do you work through system integrators?+

    Yes, regularly — as the data workstream inside a larger programme led by the customer's integrator. Partner commercials differ from the direct bands above; see Syntra for System Integrators or talk to us.

    Want a real number instead of a range?

    Tell us your source system, how much history you need to keep and what you have to report on. A short discovery is enough to turn any band on this page into a fixed fee.