ZYWAVE Costs

[wea5859]

I joined an agency using ZYWAVE and I am one of the main users now. Facing a third price increase from the company on an already high cost, I am curious about whether we at least have a fair deal. Could many of you share your ZYWAVE costs on an annual basis. We are being asked to pay over $41,000 annually and use the complete broker briefcase, HR and mod master. Some comparisons would be greatly apprecuated.

 

[DarrenE]

I joined an agency using ZYWAVE and I am one of the main users now. Facing a third price increase from the company on an already high cost, I am curious about whether we at least have a fair deal. Could many of you share your ZYWAVE costs on an annual basis. We are being asked to pay over $41,000 annually and use the complete broker briefcase, HR and mod master. Some comparisons would be greatly apprecuated.

Wow. We use HR360 and it is much less expensive. $1,200 annually for 750 accounts to give out to clients for access to their HR library . We think Zywave has a quality product but their cost is just too high.

 

[Angentknowles]

Call Modgic. They are the best alternative to mod master!. www.modgic.com

 

[Frank Mayer]

I have been a user of ZYWAVE for about 15 years. The Help Desk is superb. The training and videos educational tools are a significant value too.

However, when it comes to ZYWAVE pricing, I liken it to buying a used car from an unscrupulous car dealer....The metrics used to calculate the pricing is never transparent or disclosed...the ZYWAVE Reps discuss in broad terms that the pricing is based on "size" of the agency.

But you have absolutely no idea what they are measuring to determine "size";
e.g. Is it the size of your revenue?, the size of your staff?,...or is it the size of your conference room (lol).....you always feel like you just got screwed.

We pay about $25k per year for Brkg Builder, HRConection and Broker Briefcase.
We have 6-8 users and our small agency (100 corporate clients with apprx $2.0M rev)...this year, they sent us the renewal prices with standard 4% increase then 2 weeks later, they rescinded the renewal pricing and want to increase my prices 30%!

Overall, ZYWAVE has been a good partner but the pricing matrix is deliberately a joke...and I don't expect it to change soon because it has been part of ZYWAVE's culture.

Any other pricing info by other partners in this forum would be appreciated. thanks

 

[Brokerlikeaboss]

We were quoted around $18k for broker briefcase, mod master, and the other.. a little too rich for me right now.

 

[Frank Mayer]

ZYWAVE Pricing is a moving target...
there is no pricing integrity whatsoever. We signed up with ZYWAVE in 2004 and were one of the first agency subscribers in the state of Michigan. They have some cool products and a great help desk....however, their salespeople are rarely trained well enough to demo their products and BEWARE of the language in their contracts when it comes to "Renewal" and "auto-renewal" . , the most recent experience I had is likened to buying a used car from an unscrupulous car dealer...horrible experience in Michigan.

 

[Michael Bell]

Be careful with Zywave and read the entire contract. . We renewed our contract in 2016 with a 4 term of course Zywave never sends you the contract you have took it up online. Well our 4 year anniversary was coming up and I looked to cut some cost and decided to cancel the service. Well I found out that my contract actually renews 90days prior to the date on the product service sheet you sign. The only notification I received was in a email thread from my product support contact when we were discussing emails. Now I am stuck a 4 year, $44,000 contract in which no one from Zywave ever contacted me to discuss the renewal that was coming up. No discussion on additional service or eliminating services. I wish I could sell that way for insurance. I think they are deceptive on their sales practice which is a shame because the product isn't that bad.

 

[Broker2021]

Did you have any success in getting out of the auto 4 year deal Michael?

I'm in a similiar position in that due to being sick with Covid, I missed the 90 days before renewal deadline to cancel the agreement. I still managed to contact them 55 days before the renewal but they are now insisting that I renew with them. For another 5 years.

Has anyone else had similiar issues?

 

[Trent D Bryson]

The pricing transparency is ridiculous. They sent an "audit" form where they specifically state to put in total number of employees in agency even if not contemplating using the service. Now they want to increase our pricing to an astronomical price for divisions that don't even use the service. And the salesperson is condescending and rude.