What Epicor alternatives cost in 2026, from published prices
Most ERP vendors do not publish prices. These are the figures that are public, what they include, and how to build a comparison that holds up.
Contents
An ERP price is usually given after several meetings, by a partner, for a scope the buyer has not yet fixed. That makes a fair comparison hard and an unfair one easy. The figures below are the ones vendors publish today; everything else has to be requested in writing.
What is published, and what is not
| System | Published price | Pricing model |
|---|---|---|
| Epicor Kinetic | Not published in the sources we read | Epicor Cloud; an ERP AI agent with outcomes-based pricing1 |
| OpenLazarus | Plans from $100 a month; hosting from $150 a month; engineering support from $4,500 a month; 5.5% on AI credits23 | Per company, not per seat; works beside an ERP |
| Acumatica | APEX for Manufacturing from under $2,185 a month, support and implementation included4 | By applications and transaction volume; unlimited users5 |
| Business Central | Essentials $80, Premium $110, Team Members $8 per user a month6 | Per user, paid yearly |
| Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management | $210 per user a month; Premium $3007 | Per user, paid yearly |
| Global Shop Solutions | No figures | Upfront cost plus quarterly cost per concurrent user, updates and support included8 |
| Infor CloudSuite Industrial | No figures | Velocity Suite sold for one flat fee, amount not stated9 |
| JobBOSS² | No figures | On request10 |
| NetSuite, Plex | No price list found in the sources we could read | Not stated |
Two of the eight alternatives publish full figures, one publishes a starting price and one publishes only its model. That is typical of the market, and it is why the comparison below uses only the published numbers.
A worked example: 40 users
To show how the models diverge, we took a manufacturer with 40 people who need to work in the ERP, 25 of them full users and 15 who only approve, look up or update a few records. The arithmetic is ours, from list prices; it excludes implementation, partner services, add-ons and taxes.
| Option | Calculation from list price | Licence cost a year |
|---|---|---|
| Business Central, all Premium | 40 × $110 × 12 | $52,800 |
| Business Central, 25 Premium and 15 Team Members | (25 × $110 + 15 × $8) × 12 | $34,440 |
| Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, 25 full users | 25 × $210 × 12 | $63,000 |
| Acumatica APEX for Manufacturing, starting package | Under $2,185 × 12, unlimited users | Under $26,220, including support and implementation services |
| OpenLazarus beside the existing ERP | ($150 hosting + $4,500 engineering support) × 12, plus 5.5% on AI credits | $55,800 plus AI usage, on top of the ERP |
Three things stand out. Per-user pricing rewards limiting full users, which is why Business Central's Team Members licence matters. Acumatica's starting figure includes services, which per-user licences do not. And OpenLazarus is not an ERP price at all: it is an addition to whichever ERP keeps the books, so it should be compared with the cost of the office hours it is meant to take on, not with an ERP licence11.
What drives the total above the licence
- Implementation and data migration. Usually quoted separately, often by a partner rather than the software vendor. JobBOSS² gives an implementation time of about three to six months, which is a useful proxy for services effort10.
- Add-on modules. Infor sells MES, warehouse management, PLM, CPQ and planning as add-ons; NetSuite's Advanced Manufacturing and Manufacturing Mobile are separate SuiteApps912.
- AI usage. Microsoft sells Copilot Credits for agents separately, with an Azure subscription required, and Supply Chain Management Premium includes 1,000 credits per user a month7. OpenLazarus charges 5.5% on AI credits2.
- Deployment. Running on your own servers moves hardware, backups and upgrades onto your budget. Global Shop Solutions does not say whether its on-premises and cloud options are priced differently8.
- The cost of standing still. On-premises Kinetic keeps its current cost until Active Support ends on December 31, 2029, but without new features after release 2028.11.
How to make quotes comparable
Ask every vendor for the same five lines
- Licence or subscription, by year, for five years, at your real user mix.
- Implementation and data migration, as a fixed price or a capped estimate, with the partner named.
- Add-on modules needed for your production mode, listed one by one.
- AI usage: what is included, and what each additional unit costs.
- Support and upgrades after go-live, and what changes at renewal.
Put Epicor's own cloud quote in the same table. It is the baseline, and it carries the lowest change cost because the data model and training stay the same.
The path to a defensible number
- Fix the user mix before the first call: full users, occasional users, shop-floor terminals.
- Fix the scope from your production mode: job shop, configure-to-order, process or mixed.
- Request five-year totals on the five lines above from no more than three vendors and Epicor.
- Separate the ERP from the work around it. If the office is the constraint, price that work on its own, so it is not buried in an ERP bundle.
- Choose on total cost and fit, not on the licence line.
The end state is a single table that finance and operations both trust, with every figure traceable to a quote or a published price. For what happens after the decision, read the migration guide.
Questions buyers ask
How much does Epicor Kinetic cost?
Epicor does not publish Kinetic prices in the announcements we read. Its January 2026 release mentions an ERP AI agent with outcomes-based pricing on the Epicor Cloud. Ask for a cloud quote under the Ascend programme, broken down by licence, implementation and support.
Which Epicor alternative is cheapest?
It depends on user count and scope. On list prices, Business Central Premium costs $110 per user a month, while Acumatica's manufacturing package starts under $2,185 a month with unlimited users. Infor, Global Shop Solutions and JobBOSS² do not publish figures, so a fair comparison needs written quotes.
Is Acumatica cheaper than Epicor?
Acumatica publishes a starting price for its manufacturing package and does not charge per user; Epicor does not publish Kinetic prices. For a shop with many occasional users, unlimited-user pricing often compares well, but only a scoped quote from each vendor can settle it.
Sources
- Epicor announces schedule of final on-premises feature releases for Kinetic, Prophet 21 and BisTrack. Epicor (Business Wire release, republished by 01net), 6 Jan 2026. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
- Pricing. OpenLazarus. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
- Frequently asked questions. OpenLazarus. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
- Manufacturing management software. Acumatica. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
- Pricing: unlimited users, one transparent price. Acumatica. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
- Business Central pricing. Microsoft. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
- Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management pricing. Microsoft. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
- Pricing. Global Shop Solutions. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
- Industrial manufacturing industry software | Infor CloudSuite. Infor. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
- JobBOSS²: centralize job shop data and scale operations. ECI Software Solutions. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
- OpenLazarus for manufacturing. OpenLazarus. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
- Manufacturing overview (NetSuite Applications Suite). Oracle NetSuite Help Center. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
Updated 8 Nov 2026: First published.