What does an ERP integration cost? How the price is built up
What does an ERP integration cost? The honest answer is that there is no fixed amount, and an agency that quotes one without knowing your landscape is mostly working from assumptions. The price depends on how many flows run between your systems, how many systems are involved, how clean the data is and how good the APIs are that we need to talk to. A webshop that only sends orders to Exact Online is a different project from a wholesaler with customer specific pricing, three warehouses and a PIM.
What we can give you is the structure. An integration through Alumio, the integration platform Memo has partnered with since 2020, always consists of the same layers. Once you know those layers, you can compare quotes and see where your own choices drive the price.
Not sure yet what an integration platform does and why it works differently from a standalone connection? Start with What is iPaaS. If you first want to know which flows an ERP integration contains, read ERP integration for your webshop.
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The layers in a quote
The Alumio licence. Alumio uses a task-based pricing model with three editions: Essential, Growth and Custom. Every edition includes unlimited connections, users and workflows. You pay for the number of tasks the platform processes, in other words for how much data actually moves through your integrations. If you need more processing capacity, you add data engines as an add-on. Each edition comes with its own Alumio SLA, with priority support in Growth, and premium technical support is available as an add-on.
Implementing the routes. This is the work we do: mapping the data landscape, designing the routes and mappings, and building them route by route. A route is one flow, for example orders from the webshop to the ERP or stock from the ERP to the webshop. The number of routes and the complexity of each one drive this layer more than anything else.
Management after go-live. An integration that runs needs attention: an ERP update, a changed API, a message that gets stuck. For that we agree a tailored SLA, matched to the routes in your environment and with short response times. An order route into the ERP needs a different regime than a nightly product sync, and that shows in the price. More on Managed integrations.
Optional: enablement. If your team wants to learn to build and manage routes itself, the Alumio Enablement Packages make that possible, available for all three editions. A Memo Alumio specialist then works directly with your team, with tailored training. That shifts cost from outsourcing to in-house knowledge. See Enablement and training.
Seven factors that determine what an integration costs
Number of systems
Every system involved brings its own API, its own field names and its own quirks.
Number of flows
Products, prices, stock, orders and returns are each a route with its own rules.
Quality of the APIs
A well documented API saves build time. An API with gaps needs a workaround.
Data quality
Missing fields and duplicate records surface in the integration and have to be solved somewhere.
Exceptions in the logic
Customer specific prices, deviating VAT rules and special delivery terms make a route more complex.
Volume and frequency
The more often and the more you sync, the more tasks Alumio processes.
Management requirements
How critical a route is to your revenue determines the SLA that goes with it.
Where costs climb in practice
The layers are predictable. What derails a budget is almost always something that was not on the table at the start.
Messy data. An ERP that has been in use for years holds products without weights, customers without email addresses and pricing rules only the sales team still understands. As long as the data is only used internally, nobody notices. An integration makes it visible, and then someone has to decide whether to clean it at the source or handle it in the route. The first is almost always cheaper, provided it is in the plan.
Unclear data ownership. If it is not settled which system holds the truth about addresses, prices or stock, you end up building rules to resolve conflicts that should have been a decision. Each of those rules costs build time, and later management time.
Exceptions in pricing logic. A standard price is one field. Tiers per customer group, a temporary promotion on top of a contract price and an exception for one large account add up to a route of their own. The more exceptions, the more there is to test.
Frequency and volume. Because Alumio charges for processed tasks, every sync counts. Updating stock every few minutes for a range that rarely changes raises the task count without your customers noticing any difference. Choosing the right frequency per route is therefore also a cost decision.
Customisation in the source system. An ERP that has been extended over the years with custom fields, custom tables or custom ways of working deviates from what a standard connector expects. That can be solved, but it means extra mapping and extra testing.
That is why every project starts with the data landscape: which system owns which data, which flows run today, including the manual ones. Only after that is a quote more than an estimate.
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Standalone scripts look cheaper
A direct connection between your webshop and your ERP, built as a script or plugin, is almost always cheaper on the first quote. There is no licence and building it is quick. The difference comes later. Every new connection is another piece of code, with its own error handling and its own maintenance. Every update to the ERP or the webshop can affect each of those scripts, and each one then has to be retested and adjusted. A few years on, you are not paying for one integration but for a collection nobody fully oversees any more.
With Alumio that works differently. Every edition has unlimited connections, so an extra system or an extra flow does not cost an extra licence. You pay for implementing that new route and for the tasks it processes, but not again for the foundation. Logs per route, retries and resubmitting messages are part of the platform, rather than something you have built for every script. And if you change webshop platform, you replace one connection to the integration layer instead of all your integrations.
Our advice when comparing quotes: ask for separate line items. Licence, implementation per route, management and any enablement should each be visible on their own. Then you can see what is one-off and what recurs, and discuss per route whether it is needed now or can wait.
Two projects where the structure made the difference
XXL Nutrition: structuring instead of rebuilding. At XXL Nutrition, a sports nutrition brand in the Benelux, Magento, Pimcore and Exact Online were already connected. When a new WMS arrived, Ceyenne by Diract IT, we did not rebuild everything. We brought the existing flows together and structured them in Alumio: sales orders, purchase orders, product and stock updates, fulfilment, returns and receipt of purchase orders. The goal was not more automation, but overview and scalability. That meant the budget went to the routes that made a difference, not to repeating what already worked. Their product owner described Memo as an extension of their own team. Read the XXL Nutrition case.
Boomlab: taking over halfway. Boomlab, a laboratory wholesaler since 1895 with more than 60,000 products across the Benelux, came to us halfway through a project that a previous partner had worked on. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, the Stibo PIM and Shopware had to work together through Alumio. A takeover starts with working out what is there and what is usable, which is exactly why a clear structure per layer and per route helps: you can see what is finished and what still needs doing. Where the Stibo API had no endpoint for the full category tree, we built a webhook process in Alumio that walks the tree node by node. Read the Boomlab case.
Two different starting points, the same lesson: costs follow the landscape. If you map it first, you pay for the routes you need and not for surprises.
Want to know where your costs sit?
Tell us which systems you run and which flows need to run between them. In half an hour we will know which layers you need, where the complexity is and which route to build first.
Frequently asked questions
What does an ERP integration for a webshop cost?
It depends on the number of systems and flows, the quality of your data and how good the APIs are, so we do not quote a fixed amount. The costs consist of the Alumio licence, implementing the routes and management after go-live, optionally with enablement on top. Our quote shows those layers separately.
How does Alumio licensing work?
Alumio has three editions: Essential, Growth and Custom. Every edition includes unlimited connections, users and workflows, and you pay for the number of tasks processed. Data engines for extra processing capacity and premium technical support are available as add-ons. Which edition fits depends on your volume and how critical your routes are.
Does every extra integration cost an extra licence?
No. Because every edition has unlimited connections, an extra system does not cost an extra licence. Building the new route does take implementation time, and the tasks the route processes count towards your licence.
Why don't you give an indicative price?
Because an indicative price without knowing your landscape is mostly a guess. Two companies with the same ERP and the same webshop can end up very differently because of data quality, pricing exceptions or customisation in the ERP. In a first conversation we map that out, and then you get a quote with separate line items.
Can we save costs by building routes ourselves?
Yes, if your team has the time and interest. With the Alumio Enablement Packages you learn to use the platform with guidance from a Memo Alumio specialist. You can also choose a mix: we build the complex routes, your team manages and extends them. See Enablement and training.