What hidden costs should firms ask about when buying immigration software?

eImmigration sells three plans per user per month: Starter at $60, Essentials at $90 and Complete at $110 on monthly billing. The plan applies to the whole account, so every user is on the same one. What separates the plans is a list of 17 premium features. Starter lets you choose one, Essentials lets you choose four, and Complete includes all 17. Each extra feature on Starter or Essentials costs $15 per user per month.

That add-on price means the cheapest plan depends on how many premium features you use. The table below shows the monthly cost per user at list price, assuming every user is billed for each add-on. The pricing page doesn't say whether an add-on can be bought for only some users, so ask.

Count features one at a time, because the list splits things a buyer might treat as one. E-filing, billing and trust accounting, and card and ACH processing are three premium features. A firm that wants all three pays $90 per user either way. On Starter it chooses one and adds two. On Essentials it uses three of its four choices. Essentials is the better buy at that price because it leaves room for a fourth feature and has unlimited storage.

Add document signing, SMS and WhatsApp messaging, and two-factor sign-in with SSO, and the firm is at six features. At six, Complete costs less than either lower plan with add-ons. So settle the feature list before you compare plans, and ask for the two nearest configurations on the same quote.

A standard import costs $1,000 at eImmigration. It covers a move from a supported platform or from the vendor's Excel template, and anything else is a custom import priced by quote. Find out which kind yours is before you budget, and ask what the import leaves out. 8am's terms of service, which cover Docketwise and MyCase, exclude two jobs from the import service: rebuilding document templates and cleaning up incorrect, incomplete or duplicate data. Work a vendor excludes becomes staff time at your firm.

Free migration can carry a price of its own. Docketwise's pricing page includes it only with the Advanced plan on annual billing. Its pricing article puts Advanced at $120 per user per month on annual billing and Pro at $100. For six users that difference is $1,440 a year. A firm that would otherwise choose Pro should get a migration quote on Pro and compare the two totals.

Storage is charged by the gigabyte. eImmigration's Starter plan allows 10 GB per user, Essentials and Complete are unlimited, and extra storage costs $6 per GB per month for the account. Suppose six users on Starter bring a 100 GB document archive, and the allowance pools to 60 GB. The extra 40 GB would cost $240 a month. Moving all six users to Essentials costs $180 a month more and removes the limit, so measure the archive before you pick a plan.

Training and custom work are the lines without a published rate. Every eImmigration plan includes two hours of onboarding training, Complete adds a third, and there is free live community training every Friday. Custom forms and custom reports are fee-based services priced by quote. If you expect either one, or private sessions for staff hired later, get a figure in writing before you sign.

Taking card payments through the software adds fees that the payment processor bills. At eImmigration, card and ACH processing is a premium feature that runs through Braintree or LawPay, and the pricing page lists no processing rates. LawPay's public list is a reference point. Your contracted rate, and any platform fee, comes from the quote. LawPay's price list shows $19 per month, 2.99% plus $0.30 per transaction on Visa, Mastercard and Discover, 3.90% plus $0.30 on American Express, and 1% on eCheck. It also lists a card-brand pass-through fee, currently $7.99 a month, and adds 1.75% on foreign cards.

Suppose a firm collects $15,000 a month in card payments across 30 transactions, all at the 2.99% rate. That is $448.50 in percentage fees, $9 in transaction fees and $26.99 in monthly fees, or $484.49 a month. Over a year it comes to $5,813.88, roughly three quarters of the $7,920 Complete subscription in the budget below.

An immigration practice whose clients pay from abroad should estimate its share of foreign and American Express payments, since both cost more. The rate on an account opened through a software integration can differ from the public list. Ask which company invoices you, and ask for its rate sheet.

Suppose six users need the six premium features named above and move from a supported platform with a standard import. Billing is monthly at list price with no discount, and card volume is the $15,000 a month from the processing example.

Complete is $720 cheaper for the year than Essentials with two add-ons, which is the feature count at work. Storage and onboarding training add nothing on Complete, because storage is unlimited and three hours of training are included.

Annual billing lowers Complete to $100 per user per month, or $7,200 for the year. That saves another $720 and commits the firm to twelve months that aren't refunded if it leaves early. Nonprofits get 50% off the standard monthly rate when they commit to an annual term, which makes Complete $55 per user per month. That discount can't be combined with the annual-billing or user-count discounts.

The last costs arrive at renewal or exit. eImmigration's terms here are short. Subscriptions run monthly or yearly, and the FAQ says customers don't "need to commit to 2-3 years." There is no cancellation fee, and a period already paid isn't refunded. On cancellation the firm gets one copy of all its data at no charge, and additional copies are priced by database size. The page also says there are "no setup fees or other hidden fees." The storage, add-on, import and custom-work charges above are the published or quoted ones to budget for.

Other contracts read differently, so put the same questions to every vendor. Under 8am's terms, a subscription renews automatically each month or year, and a price change takes effect at the start of the next subscription period. Fees are non-refundable, with no refund for downgrading or removing users. A data export is a paid service that begins only after its fee is paid in full.

Ask about the export format as well as the fee. North Carolina State Bar 2011 Formal Ethics Opinion 6 advises lawyers who use hosted software to confirm that, if they stop using the product, the firm "will have a method for retrieving the data" in a non-proprietary format it can access. Have the export format written into the order form, along with the renewal date and the notice needed to stop a renewal.