Epicorvs
DEAR Systems
DEAR Systems: Cloud inventory management for growing businesses
Epicor
A portfolio of separately acquired ERP products, not one system
As of 30 August 2026, Epicor starts at $750/month. Epicor sells several distinct ERP products under one brand, notably Kinetic for manufacturing and Prophet 21 for distribution. Softwr lists it under ERP. Epicor is made by Epicor Software Corporation, launched in 1972, available on Web, Self-hosted.
Overview
What Epicor does
Epicor is an ERP vendor serving manufacturing, distribution, building supply and retail, headquartered in Austin and owned by the private equity firm Clayton Dubilier and Rice. The single most useful thing to know before an evaluation is that Epicor is not one product. Kinetic, formerly Epicor ERP, serves discrete manufacturers. Prophet 21 serves wholesale distributors. Eclipse serves electrical, plumbing and industrial distribution. BisTrack serves lumber and building materials dealers. These arrived through separate acquisitions, have separate code bases, separate roadmaps and separate implementation practices, and a reference or a review of one tells you almost nothing about another. What distinguishes the portfolio is vertical depth bought rather than built. Each product carries the terminology, workflows and regulatory handling of the industry it grew up in, which is why a lumber yard running BisTrack or an electrical distributor running Eclipse gets functionality out of the box that a horizontal ERP would need heavy configuration to approximate. The commercial consequence is that Epicor competes well when your industry matches one of its products closely and competes poorly when it does not, because the fallback is the general product with customisation, which is exactly the outcome that makes ERP expensive to own. The buyers are mid-market manufacturers and distributors, generally North American, with revenue from tens of millions upward. Kinetic is built on the Microsoft stack and its cloud form is a single-tenant deployment on Azure rather than shared multi-tenant SaaS, which means you keep an upgrade decision and the work that goes with it. The trade-off across all of these products is customisation debt: Epicor products are extensible and consequently heavily extended, and a heavily extended installation is one whose upgrade path is a project rather than a task, which is why long-standing customers are so often several versions behind. Sales run through both a direct force and a partner channel depending on product and region, so establish early which one you are dealing with and who is accountable for delivery.
What people use it for
- A discrete manufacturer moving off spreadsheets and an accounting package onto a system that models routings and job costs
- A wholesale distributor whose pricing, rebate and purchasing rules exceed what a general ERP handles without customisation
- An electrical or plumbing distributor needing counter sales and trade-specific workflow out of the box
- A building materials dealer needing yard operations, delivery scheduling and configured product ordering in one system
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Epicor.
- Epicor is a portfolio of separately acquired products rather than one system, so reviews, references and analyst coverage about Epicor as a brand can be misleading about the specific product you are being sold.
- The products are highly customisable and are routinely customised, and heavily customised installations become expensive to upgrade, which is why long-standing customers frequently run versions several releases behind current.
- Cloud delivery is single-tenant hosting rather than multi-tenant SaaS, so you still own an upgrade decision and the regression testing that comes with it, and buyers who expected the SaaS model of no upgrades are surprised.
- Sales and delivery run through a mix of direct staff and partners depending on product and region, so accountability for a failed implementation can be genuinely ambiguous unless it is fixed in the contract before signature.
- The strongest coverage is in North American manufacturing and distribution, so an international group needing statutory compliance and local support across many countries has to test that coverage carefully rather than assume it.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Epicor
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- EpicorvsFishbowl
Fishbowl: Manufacturing and warehouse management for QuickBooks
- EpicorvsInfor CloudSuite
Infor CloudSuite: Industry-specific cloud ERP solutions
- EpicorvsMRPeasy
MRPeasy: Affordable cloud MRP for small manufacturers
Pricing
What Epicor costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Starter
$750 /mo
- Core ERP
- Manufacturing
- Financial management
- Basic CRM
Professional
$1,500 /mo
- Advanced ERP
- Advanced CRM
- Analytics
- Integrations
Capabilities
Features
Kinetic
discrete manufacturing ERP covering production, materials, quality and finance on the Microsoft stack
Prophet 21
wholesale distribution ERP with distribution-specific pricing, purchasing and inventory management
Eclipse
distribution ERP for electrical, plumbing and industrial trades with counter sales and job workflows
BisTrack
ERP for lumber and building materials dealers including yard, delivery and configured product handling
Cloud deployment
single-tenant hosting on Azure for the main products rather than shared multi-tenant SaaS
Extensibility tooling
business process management and function tooling for customising workflow without changing core code
Manufacturing execution
shop floor data collection and scheduling as part of the Kinetic product
Industry compliance
sector-specific tax, certification and documentation handling in each vertical product
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Which Epicor product am I actually being sold?
Ask explicitly, by name. Kinetic, Prophet 21, Eclipse and BisTrack are different systems with different roadmaps. Then ask for references on that specific product, in your industry, at your size.
Is Epicor Kinetic a true SaaS product?
It is delivered as a hosted single-tenant service on Azure. You get vendor-managed infrastructure, but you do not get the multi-tenant model where the vendor upgrades everyone at once and no upgrade project exists.
How much should I customise?
Less than you will want to. Every modification is something to retest and potentially rework at each upgrade, and the accumulation of them is the main reason customers get stranded on old versions. Push hard on whether a requirement is genuinely a differentiator before building for it.
Direct or partner implementation?
Both exist. The partner's track record on your product and industry matters more than the vendor's, so ask who will staff the project, request their references, and put named staff into the statement of work.
Behind it
Who makes Epicor
- Company
- Epicor Software Corporation
- Based in
- Austin, TX
Keep looking
Where to go from Epicor
- Epicor alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Epicor pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Epicor badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All ERP softwareThe full category
- Best ERP softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best ERP software for
Compare Epicor with
- QAD Adaptive ERP
- Infor CloudSuite
- Rootstock
- DEAR Systems
- Fishbowl
- MRPeasy
- NetSuite
- Metasfresh
- GEP SMART
- iDempiere
- Plex Manufacturing Cloud
- TallyPrime
- TeamSystem
- TOTVS
- Tryton
- Tyler Enterprise ERP (Munis)
- Unanet
- QAD ERP
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Epicor, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Epicor
Epicor alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Epicor pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Epicor
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