Pricing · Private beta
One document system, priced around your archive
Two numbers per institution: a one-time setup fee and an annual subscription. No per-seat charges, and it runs in your own cloud. Book a demo for a real quote.
Starter
One-time setup + annual subscription
For a single team getting its archive under control
- The archive: documents, versions, search, retention
- Intake that reads, classifies, and files what arrives
- Guided digitization of your backlog
- Email and standard support
Advancement
Most popular for advancement teams
For a full advancement shop running its documents through PaperlessZen
- Everything in Starter
- Obligation and deadline tracking, with reminders before dates come due
- Amendments that leave the original intact, on the record
- Approval flows and the donor portal
- Role-shaped home views for fundraisers, stewardship, and leadership
- Dynamics 365 integration: documents on the constituent record, note attachments moved out of CRM storage
- Automations in plain language
Institution
One-time setup + annual subscription
For multi-team institutions and foundations
- Everything in Advancement
- Legal holds and exportable audit trails
- Salesforce and Raiser's Edge NXT integrations on request
- Role-based governance, with single sign-on on the near-term roadmap
- Dedicated onboarding and priority support
PaperlessZen Desktop Lite
A single-user Windows capture app: it watches the folders your scanners write to, reads every page on your own machine, and makes documents findable from a hotkey. No account, no server, no cloud. In development now, with early access opening in waves.
The desktop app is included with every plan above and is never charged per seat or per device. Lite is the edition that needs no plan at all.
The cost of the old way
See what the old way is costing you
A legacy document system is priced per seat, plus an enterprise implementation, plus a vendor scan-and-index project on top. Set the sliders to your size and watch it add up. PaperlessZen replaces all of it with two fixed numbers, quoted for your institution in a demo.
Seats drive legacy per-seat pricing. They never change the PaperlessZen number.
Assumptions
Illustrative estimate based on typical enterprise list pricing: a legacy EDMS at roughly $900 per seat a year, a one-time setup around $30,000, and vendor scan-and-index at about $0.18 a document. PaperlessZen is not priced this way, so we don't model it here: your quote is a one-time setup fee and a flat yearly subscription, both fixed for your institution, with no per-seat or per-document charges. Hosting runs in your own cloud subscription and stays on your existing cloud bill. Book a demo for your two numbers.
Legacy EDMS
- Recurring / year (per seat)
- —
- One-time setup + digitizing
- —
- First-year total
- —
PaperlessZen
- One-time setup, includes digitizing your backlog
- Fixed
- Yearly subscription, whole team included
- Fixed
- Per-seat and per-document fees
- None
Runs in your own cloud subscription; hosting stays on your existing cloud bill. Both numbers are quoted once, for your institution, in a demo.
Comparison
Feature for feature, against the old ways
Your archive, the obligations inside it, and the trail behind every document, measured against a legacy EDMS and a pile of shared drives.
| PaperlessZen™ | Legacy EDMS | Point tools + shared drives | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Versioned document archive | Limited | ||
| Search that reads every scanned page (OCR) | Limited | — | |
| Find the exact passage, with its page | — | — | |
| Obligations and deadlines tracked from the text | — | — | |
| Retention schedules and legal holds | — | ||
| Amendments kept with the original, never over it | Limited | — | |
| Approval flows with a full audit trail | — | ||
| External shares you can revoke immediately | Limited | — | |
| Documents surfaced inside your CRM | Limited | — | |
| Automations in plain language | Limited | — | |
| Time to first searchable documents | Days | Months | Never fully |
| One-time setup | Quoted upfront, digitizing included | $$$ | Low |
| Cost of adding a seat | $0, flat annual fee | Per-seat license | Per-user license |
| Runs in your own cloud | Limited |
Pricing questions
Why don't you list a price?
Because the fair number depends on the size of your archive and what it takes to stand the system up in your cloud, not on a rate card. Every quote is the same two numbers: a one-time setup fee and an annual subscription, both fixed for your institution. The calculator above shows what the old way costs at your size, so you know what you're comparing against.
How is it priced?
Two numbers per institution, both fixed in your quote. A one-time setup fee covers deploying PaperlessZen into your own cloud and digitizing your backlog. A flat annual subscription covers everything after that. No per-seat charges and no per-document fees, so giving the whole team access, or scanning one more box, never moves the meter.
Who hosts it?
You do. PaperlessZen runs in your institution's own cloud subscription, so your documents never leave your environment. Microsoft Azure is our preferred and most developed platform, and we can work with your team on AWS, Google Cloud, or another provider you already run. Hosting costs stay on your existing cloud bill; the setup fee covers getting you running there.
We're a small shop. Is this only for large institutions?
No. Starter is built for a single team getting its archive under control. You grow into obligation tracking, approval flows, and the donor portal when you're ready, on the same archive.
What does the beta mean for pricing?
Early-access institutions get founding pricing and hands-on onboarding while we build alongside you. Book a demo or join the early access list and we'll walk you through what that looks like.
Is the desktop app extra?
No. The desktop capture app is included with every plan and is never charged per seat or per device. Its single-user edition, Desktop Lite, is free forever and needs no plan at all: no account, no cloud, no trial clock. It is in development now, with early access opening in waves.
Get a number built around your archive
Book a 30-minute demo with your own documents. You'll leave with a real quote, one setup number and one annual number, not a price you have to reverse-engineer.
