The Avalara platform eases the burden of tax compliance, but getting clarity on pricing can be a challenge. Vertice is here to help: our Avalara pricing guide breaks down subscription structures and compares the solution to its competition. Then, discover how our customer purchasing teams can streamline your IT procurement process and unlock discounts by leveraging our market intelligence. 

What Avalara can do for you

Avalara offers cloud-based software solutions designed to help businesses handle tax compliance, particularly with regard to sales tax and VAT. 

With the US comprising more than 13,000 jurisdictions with varying tax rates, manually managing compliance is incredibly complex — and that’s before considering international tax on top. But by automating various tax compliance tasks with a platform like Avalara, the process can be made easier, faster, and more accurate. 

Avalara’s primary solution is AvaTax, an automated system that calculates tax using the latest rates based on location, item, regulations, legislative changes, and more. It supports many types of tax, including sales and use tax, VAT, goods and services tax (GST), customs and duties calculation, excise tax, and beverage alcohol tax. 

Leveraging tax compliance automation within your business brings a number of advantages:

• Reduced overhead – Avalara employs dedicated tax compliance professionals to maintain a vast database of rates and regulations around the world, ensuring you stay compliant without the significant burden of manual research.
• Improved accuracy – Tax compliance automation reduces the chance of human error, while Avalara’s tax database provides a rock-solid foundation for your calculations. 
• Lower audit risk – With Avalara, it’s easy to ensure you’re registered in the right locations, are using the correct rates, and your returns are filed on time. 
• International compliance – AvaTax supports omnichannel selling across the US and abroad, providing a single source of truth for transaction tax data across all your platforms. 
• Scalability – Tax compliance typically increases in complexity as businesses grow. Automation can help you manage this burden so it’s easier to scale your operations.
• Customer experience – Avalara ensures you’re charging the correct tax rates at checkout, reducing abandonment and improving the customer experience. 

Another major benefit of Alavara’s products is native SaaS integration with over 1,200 third-party solutions across accounting, ERP, e-commerce, shopping cart, and more, streamlining the tax compliance process within every aspect of your business. 

Avalara pricing structures and tiers

For the most part, Avalara pricing isn’t disclosed publicly. This is common practice among SaaS providers, who want to retain a competitive edge during contract negotiations. Fortunately, this is where Vertice can help, using benchmarking data to leverage favorable pricing on your organization’s behalf. 

Avalara pricing is designed to scale with your business, with most products based on volume. Factors that affect your subscription cost include things like the number of transactions processed, the functionality required, and the number of users. 

While the lack of pricing clarity may be frustrating, this modular approach means you’ll only pay for what you actually need. Ultimately, your subscription plan will depend on which services you choose and the size of your business: small, midsize, or enterprise. 

In terms of Avalara’s products themselves, they’re broken into the five areas detailed below. 

Avalara pricing – Calculations

Automatically apply the latest tax rates to your shopping carts and invoicing systems in real time, track your tax nexus for every state and jurisdiction, and consolidate reports on sales tax liabilities and exemptions.

Avalara pricing – Returns and Reporting

Automate preparation and filing of returns, and easily manage requirements for each state and jurisdiction through a single dashboard.

Avalara pricing – Business Licenses and Registration

Simplify the process of registering for sales tax across the US, and manage your portfolio of business licenses in one central application. 

Avalara does publish some pricing here. For new businesses, license guidance is available from $99, while sales tax registration is available from $349 per location.

Avalara pricing – Compliance Documents

Collect, store, and manage all your certifications from a central dashboard, with features including automatic renewal requests and automatic tax exemptions applied at checkout.

Avalara pricing – Content, Data, and Insights

Conduct an in-depth tax compliance risk assessment based on your business activity, and generate insights to inform your tax compliance strategy. 

Additional Avalara costs to consider

Avalara customers won’t have any unexpected additional costs to consider, because subscription plans will be negotiated according to the features and functionality they need. By default, your plan will be upgraded to the next tier if you exceed its limits, although you can opt out of this — in that instance, overage charges will apply instead.

Avalara does offer a number of professional and advisory services for an additional fee, such as nexus analysis, sales tax registration, backfiling, and implementation of Avalara solutions. You can also purchase a full sales tax risk assessment, letting you know when and where you need to register your business.

If you have high transaction volumes and require faster tax calculations, Avalara also offers Edge for AvaTax. This service employs edge computing to improve performance, and is currently compatible with AWS and GCP deployments. 

Other vendors offering tax compliance software

As part of your procurement process, it’s important to consider alternative vendors who may be better suited to your business’s needs and budget. Here’s a look at some other popular tax compliance solutions.

Avalara pricing vs Sovos

If you’re looking for a comprehensive suite of tax compliance tools across sales and use, VAT, and excise tax, Sovos may fit the bill. The solution is known for its strong global presence and support for international tax regulations, which means it’s well-suited to mid-sized and large businesses operating across borders. 

Sovos pricing is not particularly transparent; like Avalara, it’s based on transaction volume and the features you need. This vendor also offers managed services around tax filing and compliance. 

Avalara pricing vs TaxJar

Startups and smaller businesses may wish to consider TaxJar, a solution known for its user-friendly interface and strong integrations with popular e-commerce platforms. Its ease of use is best-suited to lower sales volumes and more basic sales tax automation requirements, but may fall short in use cases involving complex tax scenarios or international business.

TaxJar pricing is fairly straightforward compared to competitors like Avalara. There are two tiered plans — Starter and Professional — with subscriptions to both based on transaction volume. 

Avalara pricing vs Vertex

Vertex offers a highly scalable and feature-rich platform that’s ideal for large enterprises with complex global tax compliance requirements. Capabilities include an extensive tax content database and robust automation for calculations, returns, and exemption management.

Since Vertex pricing is enterprise-focused, it may be less suitable for smaller businesses. Likewise, there may be greater implementation and maintenance overhead due to the complexity of the software. Quotes are based on features and volume required, with pricing typically geared towards larger multinational corporations and businesses with high transaction volume. 

Avalara pricing – the Vertice verdict

Avalara strikes a balance between features, ease of use, and scalability. For this reason, it’s particularly well-positioned to serve businesses in the mid-market seeking tax compliance automation. But with its comprehensive suite of tax compliance tools — together with a strong roster of managed services — it also meets a broad range of needs across the entire spectrum from startups to enterprises. 

Although pricing isn’t especially transparent, this is the case with many competitor solutions, and custom quotes may result in more cost-effective procurement as you’ll only pay for the functionality you need.

Speaking of pricing, Vertice can help you acquire Avalara for less. When you leverage the Vertice service, our experts negotiate on your behalf using our pricing intel to unlock discounts and get your business the best deal. Our SaaS Purchasing Platform can also unify all your SaaS subscriptions into one central location, helping you optimize SaaS license management and eliminate waste. Want to know more? Simply get in touch using the form below.